 All right, I'm gonna go ahead and get started. So today I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about delegating work. I apologize I have a cold, so my voice is a little more sultry than usual. So my name is Hannah Del Porto. I am the Chief Operating Officer at Brick Factory. We're a Drupal Development Shop in Washington, D.C. Before I start, I wanna thank you guys for being here. I really appreciate it. And I also wanna let you guys know that most of what I'm gonna say to you is in my speaker notes, and I'm gonna share the entire presentation with the slides and the notes when they post the recording. So you guys don't need to write down what I'm saying or what's on the slides. Save your notes for your great ideas. You can do anything, but you can't do everything. It's actually not possible to do everything yourself, so learning to delegate is usually pretty critical to making progress in your career. This is how the story usually goes. You get promoted to manager. Congratulations, now you have a team to manage. But the work you were doing before still needs to be done, so you keep doing it. The obvious problem is that if you keep doing your old job, it's really tough to do your new job. And part of your new job as a manager is to really challenge your team by continually increasing their level of responsibility and of authority as well. So essentially you want to train them to do your job and the best training to do your work is actually letting them do some of it. Management is really all about producing results through other people. The idea is not only to produce more than you possibly could on your own, but to be more successful as a team than any of you could be individually. And it's your goal as a manager to make that happen. So you may be thinking, if I train other people to do my work, won't they take my job? And the short answer is yes, and that's what we want to happen. Hopefully you will train your employees so well that you will no longer be needed in your current role and you can move on to bigger and better things. So we're gonna look at some common objections to passing along work and I've heard all of these. The first one is I need to contribute. And this is especially common if you're coming from a technical team. So in your previous roles, you were probably evaluated on and really appreciated for your contribution in terms of work products. But since a manager's role is to produce results through other people, you actually will contribute more by delegating work and by bringing your employees up to your level. Another one is I can do it better. I really hope you can do it better and that's why you're in charge. But you're probably better at filing papers than the admin intern and that doesn't mean you should be doing that too. So you are better because you have more experience, you have more practice and that is precisely what we're trying to change through delegating work. And this is the one that I hear most often. I don't have time to explain every single thing. And a lot of times my employees are like, well, it's gonna take me twice as long to even explain it to somebody as it is to just do it myself. That may be true and that's excellent logic until the next time that same task needs to be done and you are still doing it. I can't trust other people. If your staff is actually incompetent, that is a whole separate presentation for another day. But the more probable issue is that you really just need to select the right task to delegate and then create a framework to ensure success and that's what we're gonna talk about right now. So what kind of tasks should you delegate? So you wanna start by identifying the highest level, most value added in, most important task that you work on. That's the stuff that you should do. So it's really crucial when you're at the management level to be focusing on what is important to your company and then we're gonna figure out how to delegate everything else, everything else. So you may be thinking, I only spend 10% of my time on really high level super value added important tasks. If I delegate everything else, I won't have any work to do. But the probable reason you're only spending 10% of your time on that stuff is because of all the other work. So if you get rid of it, you can focus on the reason that you became a manager, which is using that expertise that you guys have to grow and improve your company. So let's delegate. We don't wanna just dump everything on our teams. So we're gonna actually start with the easy stuff. We're gonna start with the low hanging fruit, the stuff where your team can either already take it on because they have the knowledge and skills or it's something that's fairly easy for them to pick up. It doesn't require a lot of training. So the point of this is to, the point of this is to get a system going, okay? Get them used to taking on your work and it's also going to give you time while you delegate those easy tasks while they're getting used to that work. You are going to have time to plan the things that are a little more complicated. So some examples here. We recently hired a workflow manager and she updates our resource planning calendar. That is really easy for her. No training required. She looks at our staff calendar. She adds people's holidays, conferences, those sorts of things. She was able to take that on without a lot of training and it freed up our heads of our teams from having to fill that out themselves. So one less thing for them to do. For developers, it's usually pretty easy to look at their existing skill set and figure out what they can take on without a lot of trouble. Whatever you give them, one less thing that you have to do. And next, so the step two is the important stuff. Why is it important? Because it is either helping your schedule or it's a learning opportunity and this is really the meat of your work, the stuff that's important to delegate. And nobody can prioritize your work for you, but those are some potential attributes to look at. So first, is the task recurring or ongoing? So will delegating that work save you time in the future? Two, is that task going to help the person doing it to grow or develop their skills? And three, you do need to think about whether you have whatever time is required to train, answer questions, check progress, just to ensure the success of that work. So, and this is where I see the excuses happen. One of our project managers was doing a daily report. It took her about 15 minutes. She didn't wanna pass it off to her team because it took them 30 minutes to do it and this is every single day. She said, I just can't double the hours that we're billing this client for this work. It doesn't make any sense. But she was doing it every single day. So passing that off gives her five hours a month where she's leading her team, where she's doing the work that our company needs done. And in the meantime, her team is learning how to do this. They're getting faster. They won't spend 30 minutes forever but she has to let that go, teach them and let them take that on. And for developers, this is a tough one because you will always have, I mean, by nature you will have senior developers who have skills that the junior developers don't have but junior developers cannot grow in their career without a chance to work on tasks that they don't know how to do. So even if you are the only one who knows a particular technology or project, maybe especially if you're the only one, look for low risk opportunities where the timeline allows your team to learn while they work. So next, the trickier stuff. Delegation does get more challenging when the work is high risk, time sensitive or requires a lot of background knowledge. We still wanna transition this work to our team but there are ways to make it a bit easier. So you can start by having employees shadow you, co-chair the project or maybe break down baby bites of it over time. That not only helps create a more natural transition in the workflow but it saves you from having to spend a ton of time upfront training them. Some examples here. On our team, we have client managers with decades of experience, not only managing clients but managing our clients, managing our projects. They just know everything. So it's sometimes it's quite hard to bring on newer project managers who just don't have that background knowledge. They don't have the project knowledge. And so what we do is to help get them situated, we make them co-chairs on projects. So they sit in on calls. They're copied on emails. They get feedback from our senior project or senior client managers on their attempts to communicate with the client, on their attempts to get involved in the project. So this means we don't have to have some kind of 200 hour debrief when they come on, onboarding to get them working on these clients. They can ease their way into it and it creates a much more natural transition for the client as well. Similarly with developers. We had a developer join our team who had limited experience with Drupal 8, whereas our team has been using it for a full two years. And so what we did is we looked for projects coming up. We broke out pieces of that project, gave longer timelines for those. And so he was able to pick up Drupal 8 while he was contributing to a project and we didn't just drop them in the deep end and the work doesn't suffer for it. There are a lot of lists of work that you should never delegate. This is one of them. I am personally not a fan of rules and I specifically don't know your job or your company. So use your common sense here. You know, obviously as a manager you do need to be involved in hiring, motivating, leading, disciplining if necessary your staff. But at the end of the day we wanna pass on managerial skills as well. So again, use your common sense, think about the culture of your company and your specific work and look for opportunities to get them involved where it makes sense. So we're gonna move on to some process guidelines for delegating. Delegate authority, not just work. There is no image on this slide. This is the most important slide in my presentation. If this is the only thing you pick up from this presentation, then success. Your goal is to train your employees to do your job, not just your work. So you really wanna think about teaching them ownership of their work and help them develop the confidence they need to make decisions for themselves. And use the 70% rule. So that means if the product of your delegated work is 70% as good, so a C, as if you had done it yourself, that's a win. Give positive feedback and move on with your life. And don't micromanage. So if you tell your employees exactly how to do the task, make them consult you at every single step, get approval for every step of it, that work's gonna keep coming back to you over and over and over and over. And you're not gonna get the full benefits of delegating in your schedule and neither is your team. They're not gonna take on that responsibility. They're not going to feel they have that authority. So find ways to let go of that and let them make their own decisions. And try to be patient. Entertain the possibility that you may not have included all of the information needed or you weren't specific enough. You know, let them ask some questions as they get to know their new assignment and try to be patient with them. So we're gonna talk about how to delegate in practice. First, we want to identify the desired outcome. So again, your way is not the only way and honestly it may not even be the best way. So ideally you want to identify what success looks like in the work rather than dictating an exact process that needs to be followed. That's Christmas pudding in case you guys don't know. Huge fan. Identify the expected interaction. So this means what are you looking for in terms of them interacting with you as that work is done? Do you expect them to wait for you to tell them what to do? Should they make a recommendation and then go ahead with it? Can they do anything they want? Set those expectations with them. How much authority do they have to act without your approval? Let them know. And explain the why. So I'm actually a big fan of this whenever you're assigning work out to people. I think that people make much better decisions in general if they understand how their task or their project fits into the bigger picture of the client or product strategy. So and in delegating you also want to explain the benefits of that actual work that you're delegating. So what skills does that person have that you're leveraging or that can be developed by that work? How does that work fit into their general career development plan? And what opportunity is it giving them to contribute back to your team or to the work that you're doing? And identify any potential pitfalls. So take some time and think about your own experience with the work that you've done. You have that experience, share it with them. Don't let them unwittingly discover the one thing that's gonna ruin the project because you failed to mention it. And at the end of the day, delegating does not mean you completely give up responsibility. This is your team. So you need to think ahead a little bit about what is needed to ensure success. So how much oversight is needed for this particular bit of work you're passing on? Do you need check-ins? Do they need feedback? Quality control? They may need more interaction from you as they're getting comfortable with the work. And typically the more complex the task is, the more structured your involvement needs to be. So how do you build on your wild, wild success in delegating tasks? Expand their domain. So as your employees grow their skills and experience, help them take on new areas of responsibility we constantly wanna be moving that bar for them. And let them make real decisions. This not only takes the burden off of you, but I find a lot of times my employees have new perspectives and ways of doing things that I never even would have thought of. And get them involved. So you can ask your employees what responsibilities they would like to take on. Let them volunteer for assignments and help them feel like they have a little bit of control of their destiny. Delegation can be kind of hard. So you have to stay committed. It takes time to delegate tasks. You have to commit to training, supporting and growing your staff. To be successful, you have to be willing to learn from your own mistakes and those of your employees. But it's really the only way for employees to grow and it's the best way to free up your time so you can focus on the work that you want to be doing. So it can seem easier to just do things yourself, but delegating is an investment in future you. Thank you all for coming, really appreciate it. We have some time for Q and A, but if you guys wanna talk to me after this short session, so very overview. If you guys have any specific questions, you are more than welcome to contact me anytime. Tweet me, email me. Okay, any questions? Hello. So you gave an example earlier about how it might take you 15 minutes to do a task, but someone else 30 minutes. The situation that I find myself struggling more is like, it takes me 30 minutes to do a task, but if I bring someone else to do the task and teach them and give feedback and whatnot, it's like three or four hours total time. Because we build to the client. Yeah, absolutely. Like 30 minutes versus three or four hours, that's a big difference. Do you have any thoughts about how in order to deal with that? Yes, that happens to us all the time. So you wanna think about the future of this work. Is this going to happen often? Or is it really important? Is it worth spending that upfront? Sometimes you have to spend that time upfront, but is that going to get you somewhere in the future? Is it worth that time investment? In terms of billing clients, it kind of depends on the situation. At our firm, we do have internal training time where we know if we're onboarding an employee, we're gonna burn some time teaching them how we do things, how the client does things, and that's internal training time for us, and that's okay. But sometimes it's not worth it. I mean, sometimes you do something once ever and you might as well just do it yourself because it wasn't worth the time. Or if it's something they may have to do in the future, but it's not often recurring, have them watch you. Have them learn it so that in their life they may be able to do it again, but maybe it's not benefiting your company. So it's not worth actually handing off that responsibility. I know, I'm sorry, but it's like, I can come to your office and give you more specific feedback, but it kind of depends on the situation. Right, okay, thanks. Thank you. Come on up. So I'm in the process of delegating a lot of tasks about new workflows and all that kind of stuff, but I sometimes run into the issue of, I have some really excited employees that are learning a lot of things. Awesome. On tasks, and it's going really great, but the one kind of rub I get is sometimes they're, I don't know how to put this, it's like I'm having trouble keeping them in their lane. I've got like a content manager or something like poking around in views or something like that. I was like, what are the techniques that you have found to kind of- I mean, are they doing damage? Are they just looking around? No, I mean, is it, do you encourage that kind of thing? We do. And then I'm like, circle back, or what's the technique that you guys use with that situation? Okay, so interesting. How many people at your company and on your team? So four of us. So I'm the team lead, I have a back-end dev, a front-end dev, and several content managers. Okay, and are you worried about the time you're spent? So my question is because on a small team, I find that it's actually really useful to have cross-functional skills or just even knowledge. I mean, it cuts down questions. It makes people understand each other better. So there's some benefit there to them kind of peeking around unless they're destroying things. Okay, there's like a threshold where you just kind of pay attention. Where, you know, if you're, I mean, it's good that you're exploring these types of things, but let's, you know, let's circle back with like the back-end dev at a different time after these other tasks are completed. Oh yeah, I mean, yeah, of course, if they're not getting their work done, yeah, and in general, in every situation, in my opinion, absolute honesty, the best policy. Just be like, hey, I noticed you're spending a lot of time doing this, and you have these three other things that we are really critical for you to get done. So if you could prioritize these, loop back on this thing that you're poking around in. Right, it hasn't- And just tell them. Right, it hasn't got to that point yet, but I just don't want to point out that. They sound awesome, so I bet they're gonna understand and want to get on board with your plan, so. Thank you. Sure. Anyone else want to have a chit chat? No, any? All right, tweet me. Thanks. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh yeah. It's gonna be a critical one. My husband wouldn't appreciate it. I'm sorry, go ahead. And you can give feedback. I'm not saying don't offer suggestions for improvement, but don't nitpick if they did well enough. It's okay, they're not you.