Jason Buffington .com

Transcript

I often talk to folks about how they “don’t have enough time” and their desire to delegate. In most cases, delegating expertise-based tasks rarely relieves time … because of what it takes to ramp the new person.

If a task takes you an hour – as someone who’s routinely done it:

• It could take ½ hour to explain the task and decide if they want it.
• You might need a few minutes with their manager about expectations, growth opportunity.

THEN

• It could take ½ hour to show how
• 15 minutes somewhere to check on progress; address questions
• Afterwards, spend time on “What did they learn?  How could they improve next time?”

OH and next time:

• Maybe you’ll spend a few minutes getting them back to speed?
• Another 15 minutes for more questions?
• Maybe, a little more time checking how they did “on their own”?

Now, maybe you’re done.

BUT for you to save an hour … you spent 3 or 4 or more

If you would have done that task at least 4 more times, you really are saving time. More importantly,

• Every future hour they give you back … frees your time to invest in something else 
• Better yet, you could invest those saved hours to enable another teammate with another task

I say ‘invest’ because delegating tasks through coaching is like compound interest:

• You spending five hours doing your own tasks is like a checking account: Time deposits go in – Work payments go out – nothing else to show
• You investing five hours to enable a coworker … buys you back “infinite minus five” hours of additional impact.

Here’s the math – if you have two tasks that you do monthly-ish … so 20 hours per year – no big deal.  OR

• Spend 5 hours with a team member on task 1
• Spend 5 hours with a team member on task 2

HEY, you already gained back 10 hours

• So, find two more tasks and two more team members ?

Maybe saving 40 hours per year doesn’t sound like a lot?  But most expertise-tasks take far longer than one hour. If each takes a couple hours per month, …

… you’ve bought yourself a full month of your time back

AND you helped four team members grow in their careers and their value to the org

Delegating expert tasks rarely yields immediate time savings, but it always results in growing others’ expertise and your impact – and that is time well spent.

See you next Monday.