“That’s the first place I am stumped,” Colleen admitted. “Some of the tasks I know I should be doing, and some of the tasks I need to delegate.”
“How are you going to make that decision?” I asked.
Colleen laughed. “I could keep all the stuff I like to do and give away the rest.” She stopped. “But, that probably won’t work.”
“When you look at the list of things to do, the tasks that have been assigned to you, how easy is it to pick out the goals embedded in the list?”
Colleen looked at her notes. “Not so easy. It made a lot more sense in the meeting.”
“You know you need to organize this list in some way. But you can’t do that until you transform your notes.”
Colleen looked puzzled.
“Look, the goals made sense in the meeting,” I continued, “but to create an effective list, you need to transform your notes into a list of what by whens.”
Fully agree with the what by whens. It is a task unto itself to transform all those itty bitty notes on various pieces of paper into a single list with what, priority, when (and who). Once you have that, you have single source to go to figure out what next, and in what order.
Great focus here. In my experience the challenge to separate what’s ‘nice to do’ from what’s the most valuable contribution is where many managers fall down.
And then there’s the more than useful value of utilizing delegation as a development tool for your people.
Covey’s Q2 comes to mind here as well.
Nice article Tom:-)
Keeping a list?! who does that – successful people.
A struggle occurs with just what you mentioned – seperating fun stuff from delegating stuff.
The accountability is a necessary piece.
What do you do if the individual that are accountable do not follow through on their tasks?