… When it doesn’t work.
While reinventing CentralGadget.com as TechNews.biz (yeah, that’s the new name for the site), I found that the categories on the site had been screwed up.
This is part of the problem with delegation at times. The old adage, if you want something done right, do it yourself, is impossible at a startup. It just doesn’t work all of the time, because you want to do everything yourself, and that’s impossible… there’s too much work to do.
But, when you do assign the task back to the person that screwed it up, it can wind up taking more time. Worse, the person that did the work (in this case) was a flakey freelancer that bolted long ago.
In short, this is one of the problems with a startup, more than it is with delegating in and of itself. Even when you have working sites, and profits coming in, you still wind up having to do stuff that you wish you could delegate away with confidence. Unfortunately, the people that you have placed confidence in, usually have their plates full… it falls back on you to do it.
This past week I’ve run into quite a few people looking to start their own startups. I try to personalize what I wrote above to them, because most of the time you can tell instantly that they just don’t have what it takes. Part of being an effective delegator in a startup, means being able to pour every waking moment into getting the job done, until it is done. It doesn’t matter who screwed it up, your team has to be willing to do that… or they probably shouldn’t be working at a startup, and especially not leading one.
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The key to effective delegation is follow up!
I can ask someone to fix something 50 times. If they think they can do it, they’ll bop their heads against a wall and not do it 50 times in a row. That’s why a lot of startups fail. People think they can do the job, run into walls, follow up by running into them again.
It takes more… you have to have the insight to run a tight ship and demand excellence. You have to know your team better than they know themselves sometimes.
I have a counter point but I work for a Fortune 500 company…the leadership and operational aspect is 360 degrees different BUT the root cause of this issue is hiring the right people and not so much delegation. Delegation is ment to remove work from you to free you up to do other things and
If you have to follow up 50 times (in reality its 3 times) you need to make a staffing change. A start up needs talented folks that are fully cross trained in all aspects of the business to gain traction and reach excellence.