Technology
Delegating To The Floor - For Directs - Part 2 (Hall Of Fame Guidance)
In this episode of Grid Tools, we conclude our discussion on effective delegation strategies for project managers. We explore the importance of streamlining processes, utilizing templates, and fosteri...
Delegating To The Floor - For Directs - Part 2 (Hall Of Fame Guidance)
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
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Welcome to Grid Tools.
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This week, our conclusion to delegate to the floor.
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Part two, here we go.
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So to go back to our list that we had for our project manager,
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there was a lot of paperwork moving around that list.
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There were hard copies of things,
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and our hard copies really needed or is an email trial sufficient.
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Or maybe there's a PDF document repository that you send out of mail and say,
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hey, here's the repository.
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Look, if somebody says to you, no, I like it that there's a lot of all these paperwork.
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You'd be really, no, that's just wasteful.
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It costs money.
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Ink, toner, ink, causes, costs money in our project.
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Storage.
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Everybody's printing it.
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No.
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No, we've all got laptops.
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We've all got tablets.
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No, I created a little internal website.
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I did it on your own.
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I'd say people will be like, wow, that's really cool.
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I'm going to do that on my project.
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I created this internal website.
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You can go there before the meetings.
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You can log into it while you're in the meeting.
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You can look at the documents on your laptop because our company doesn't forget
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it laptops during the meeting.
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Or we will link to it from the thing you can go download any of the PDFs
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and put them into your projector, put them into your deck.
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And maybe somebody will still print them, but they'll have to go there and print them.
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And now you won't be printing them all and distributing them.
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And people then forgetting them and then, well, why didn't get mine?
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Yeah, you did.
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I gave it to you.
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Mm-hmm.
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Yeah, good.
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Can you compile the project, kick off materials once and make a template for next time?
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There's something that I found myself doing thousands of times.
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Like three months in a row, I've compiled the same thing.
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And why, this is silly.
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Why don't I have a template?
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If you're in a PMO and you're going to have hundreds of projects starting,
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there should be a standard template.
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Yeah, it'll change 5% of the time.
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But I'll tell you, reinventing the wheel happens all the time.
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I was just talking to somebody who was I talking to.
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Oh, I was talking to an IBM consultant, an associate partner about how even at IBM,
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and this is true at SAP and Oracle, and people saw some other places when they interact with people.
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They interact with a client.
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They reinvent the wheel every time on every project about things like project kickoff meetings
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and logistics and everything else, rather than having a standard way to run a meeting and so on.
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So yeah, you do that and then you gain those efficiencies every single time,
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rather than reinventing the wheel and running around in circles like,
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oh gosh, I've got to get ready.
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There's hours and hours and hours with work.
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Now, you do this 10 times a year.
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It should be minutes worth of work, not hours.
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Yeah.
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And there's something about our brains that looks for differences.
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So if we see five things, then we see the one that's different.
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So every time we go to our project, we think, oh, it's different from all the others
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because of this, this and this.
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But it's probably similar in a lot of more ways than it's different.
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So we have to train ourselves to look for the similarities and the things that can be templated.
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Hi.
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What else?
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We talked about having a library.
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Like, do you really need a hard, like a room that's a library of all the past projects?
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Can you, can you not do that electronically?
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Because again, you're wasting paper, you're wasting time, you're wasting space,
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space is expensive.
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And you're wasting time looking for things when you could use search.
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So it doesn't work very well in a library because you have to use your finger.
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And then there were status reports.
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So do you have to do status reports for each project manager that you're working for?
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Or could you do one status report that everybody looks at?
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Can you make it electronic?
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Is anybody reading them?
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Is anybody using them? Are they, are they useful?
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Does anybody notice we've just said this?
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Does anybody notice if you're late or you accidentally miss one?
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If nobody notices, delegate her.
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Okay.
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And the next step once you've got an idea of what you're doing and what's important or
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what can be delegated to the floor or done differently so that it takes a lot less time,
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you review your list with your boss.
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Now you can just delegate stuff to the floor and see if anybody notices.
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But depending on your boss, your boss might read that as I just decided not to do some of my job.
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So you need to have, as Mark said earlier, a trusting relationship,
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Mark trust me to decide what to delegate to the floor.
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I trust that if he disagrees with me, he'll just tell me I'll pick it up again and there won't be any drama.
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But if you don't know your boss that well and you're worried that there will be drama,
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then you definitely want to go and have him look at the list or go over the list with him.
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And feel like you've made the decision together.
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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So you want to book a meeting so that you get his undivided attention.
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You don't want to just like, hey, I decided not to do that report because you're passing in the corridor.
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That doesn't really give it the importance that it should have.
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Right.
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And different disc profiles will react differently to a list of your tasks.
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So the decent eyes will probably just say, you'll say, so I've analyzed all my work
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and I'd like to review these things that I don't think are required.
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And they'll look at the list and go, yeah, whatever.
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Yeah, it's fine.
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Yeah, good.
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Just go do that.
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Yeah.
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You know, fine.
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Is there anything on there that you think is really important to me?
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Nope.
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Okay.
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Fine.
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Oh, good.
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Now, guys, if you're an undivided contributor and you're not a manager and you fear that your boss is going to get you in trouble
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because you don't do something that you think is of lower quality.
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And I'm not talking about something that your boss asks about every week and you're going to stick your finger in her eye
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that I'm telling you boss that I'm not going to do it anymore, even though you asked me about it every week.
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We're not suggesting you commit political suicide.
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But I could assure you, if anybody who works for me ever in my career can you mean, say, look, boss, hey, short meeting, I'm happy to go over with it, 50 minutes long.
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I've analyzed the stuff I've been doing the last three months and I think there's some stuff I don't need to be doing anymore.
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I got a list of it.
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I want to share it with you.
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I look at the list for five seconds and go, all right, you cool with this?
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You're okay if there's risk and you're clear that I'm not, essentially, guaranteeing you won't get in trouble for this stuff.
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But on the other hand, then it looks like there's, if you've done a good analysis, I'd probably say, then it looks like there's nothing on here that I'd fall on my sword over.
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Okay, fine.
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Okay, I don't want to have an hour long conversation with you about this.
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Now, you might say, oh, Mark's a different boss.
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I don't know that I am.
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I'm just a high D. High I boss.
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And really, more as a boss, I'm much more of a high D.
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My high D. High I comes more from having to present and having to sell and being the face of the company.
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But as a manager, I think, I don't know when he may be a discreet, but I think you and Danny and Judy and Maggie would say, no, he's pretty much a high D.
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Yeah, yeah, during the workouts and talking about what things you don't definitely have to.
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Yeah, yeah, so guys, don't make your boss the reason you don't do this, particularly again, if your boss is a high D. High I.
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Yeah.
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On the other hand, what about a high C?
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Well, before we go off high C's, one thing I didn't think was the one thing you have to be careful of if these knives is they will ask you later, like three months later.
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What is that thing? And you'll say, we had a meeting, remember?
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They were, they were forgotten that they gave you an approval, but that's okay.
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You just remind them.
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You're just going to say, wow, yeah, I'm going to say, yeah, okay, I may think about that, but I don't know what we think about it.
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And then don't forget about it again.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Exactly.
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So revisiting is likely.
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So high C's all want to go over the details.
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So you'll have to talk about exactly what those tasks are, who's affected, what contingencies there are, how you're going to be.
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Pick up again, if it's needed, you know, if they're going to want to have a proper discussion and talk about how you analyzed the list and how you decided on risk and how you decided which went to the bottom of the queue and so on.
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So it's going to be a longer conversation.
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It's going to be much more detailed.
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But afterwards, they'll be confident that you did the right thing that they believe in your analysis.
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So them were likely not to question it later.
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Yeah, good.
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What about high S's?
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High S's are just be concerned that you might be overworked and that's why you're dropping something.
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So you want to reassure them that it's not that you're overworked.
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It's just that you want to be more efficient and you want to be able to do some different things.
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And that means finding some more time.
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Right.
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Yeah, the high S will also think about implications for others in the organization.
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Of course.
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And he or she will be thinking, OK, talk about this a little bit.
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I know that that guy reads this.
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Are you sure he's OK with it?
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Did he go talk to him and pave the road a little bit?
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And that's OK.
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And those are pretty good suggestions for my D2 have just gone.
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I'm not doing that.
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Yeah.
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So beware.
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If you don't know what we're talking about here about people's disprofiles you ought to.
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And we encourage you to go listen to those podcasts.
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And you can probably figure out your boss pretty straightforwardly if you listen to all of our cast on.
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On desk, but you ought to know the tendencies of your boss.
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And you ought to prepare for.
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What he or she might ask and have answers to that.
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If you're not ready for those and they ask a bunch of questions that you realize as they're asking them are completely reasonable
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and you're not prepared for them, then you've probably not done your homework on this.
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And if you say yourself, oh, I don't have time to do the hours worth of homework to get ready for that meeting.
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Really, you don't have time to spend an hour in order to gain four or five every day or maybe two every day
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or even one every day, which is four or five each week.
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I think you ought to.
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Yeah.
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That's the whole object of what you're doing.
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Why would you, why would you stime yourself at the last panel?
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So the last part of this is dealing with a pushback.
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So once you have permission from your boss and you've started dropping things that you've agreed won't be done or moving other things off your plate or making things be done differently.
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You might get pushed back from the people who are affected.
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And there's two ways of dealing with that.
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You can either refer them to your boss or you can handle it yourself.
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And that depends on how important it is and how big a deal someone's making it.
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So for instance, if you decided not to order refreshments for a meeting and somebody comes up to you and says, hey,
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there's the coffee and the doughnuts. Like there's always coffee and doughnuts.
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The reason I come to this meeting, then you say, hey, I just decided not to order them.
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Say's a little money. Say's a little time.
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Exactly. And the coffee beans on level four is open, right?
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Just walk past it.
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And most people will drop it because, you know, coffee and doughnuts isn't that important, right?
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It's not, it's not you choose your battles and that's not a battle you may pull out.
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Plus you could easily send a note before it's, hey, by the way, guys, I decided to save some time and some company money.
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We're not going to have coffee and doughnuts at the meeting.
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Yeah.
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If you want to bring it, no problem.
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Yeah.
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So you think somebody's going to complain about that?
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No, I don't think so.
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No.
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And if it's something else, it's something, you know, slightly more important.
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Try and find the benefit to them in the fact that you've dropped it.
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So, hey, I decided not to do this so that I could do this, which is beneficial for you.
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Whether that's, I decided not to print all the reports so that the state of the report could be more comprehensive.
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Oh, something.
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If you make it the benefit for the other person, if you make some of it, the benefit for the other person is amazing.
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How much more amenable they are to the changes you've made.
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Right.
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And if it's something bigger, like not doing a report that, you know, a project manager is up in arms about and, you know,
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demanding to know who made that decision, then you probably want to refer them to your boss.
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And that's why you have the conversation with your boss.
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Before hand, so that, so that she knows what you're not doing and why you're not doing it.
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And, and this, this two outcomes of that conversation, one is they can bince the person that the task doesn't need doing.
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Or you get told, hey, that caused more drama than we thought it would, you're going to have to do it.
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But nothing is forever, right? Nothing.
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So everything changes. That's the whole point of doing this.
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We're going to change your change your job to be concentrated on the more important things.
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But in another six months, you could change it again.
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So dropping things isn't forever and nor is picking stuff up.
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Everything changes all the time.
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So if you're told to pick it up again, it's just like, oh, well.
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Yeah. And look, somebody pushes back and say, hey, listen, I respect that.
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Right? I mean, oftentimes we tell you, when you get pushed back, don't immediately respond with push back yourself.
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You could say, I hear you. Talk to the boss.
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We agreed to be something we try. I appreciate the input.
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It's good to know. And I'll keep you posted on what the status is.
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Now, five people push back. Okay. Maybe go back to boss.
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They listen, everybody really wants those donuts.
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And the boss is like, no, no, I've thought about it some more.
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We're not doing them. Or you say the boss says, okay, well, let's pick it back up.
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Okay. And maybe, I mean, we're not suggesting this is not fantasy career land.
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This is not fantasy career tools. So maybe you realize of the seven things I dropped, I have to pick up two.
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You still have dropped five. And by the way, you're going to experience what I experience when I got fired.
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Not that you're going to get fired, which is just like in the movie, right is a lost arc.
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Where Indiana Jones is in the bar and the bad guy gets to drop on him.
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And he doesn't have his gun. And he realizes he's had the gun goes off.
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And he reaches down and bats his chest boom, boom like that.
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And goes, you know, I thought of dead for sure. And he looks up incredulously that that he's not dead.
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And of course, his girlfriend Karen Allen has shot the bad guy in the back.
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And the bad guy's dead. And that's what it feels like.
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You realize I had all of this angst about getting rid of this stuff.
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And I was afraid it was going to be trouble, but I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do.
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And it turned out to not be that big a deal. That's false expectations appearing real.
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If getting fired is like that, then dropping some balls that you were worried would get you in a lot of trouble.
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And all the angst you'd feared about missing that deadline in the past was all for not.
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You're going to go, ah, what else do I fear around here that is false?
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What else am I vibrating about that I ought not to vibrate about?
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And I'm going to tell you, it's been my experience of the great majority of stuff that I've vibrated about.
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Turns out not to be a problem other than show him what time for airplanes.
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And doing your best on the two or three key things in your job.
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And if you'll give yourself the opportunity to try to see what happens.
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Even if you have to pick two back up, those five that you were worried about, that your boss said, okay fine.
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And nobody notices, you're going to start to burn with an energy which says,
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I'm not doing stuff that I think has a good chance of nobody noticing.
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I did a bunch of stuff for two years, nobody missed it.
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And yeah, you can blame the organization, but I assure you, at one point, the person who was doing your job
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and had to do those things, those things were important.
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But things change.
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Things change so slowly, people don't realize the processes, policies, and procedures that you engage in, 30% of it is waste.
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There was a good reason for it before, and times have changed, and customers have changed, and technologies have changed, and people have changed, and workflows have changed.
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And now that's no longer valuable.
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But nobody has time to go back and do a fundamental analysis of every single job to decide what doesn't need to be done.
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And it's left to you, and the vast majority of us don't do it.
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Yeah, it's such a valuable skill, I'm sorry.
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So, so wish I had left it.
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Yeah, earlier, right?
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I mean, this is why we're doing career tools.
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Don't wait until you're, in my case, 55 years old to discover, you can do this stuff.
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You can do it a lot sooner.
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Yeah, the younger you are, the lower you are on the organization, the more risk there is.
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But mitigate your risk by doing a little bit of analysis, right?
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Analyze your work.
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Choose carefully.
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Review with your boss.
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Be willing to pick it back up.
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Be polite to people who push back.
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If one person pushes back, it's not an issue.
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If five push back, okay, consult with your boss.
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This is hard the first time you do it.
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You worry about getting in trouble, and then suddenly two or three years later, you realize,
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I'm no longer going to worry about that.
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I'm going to worry about what I'm going to worry about is the stuff I'm doing that doesn't need to get done.
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I'm going to be willing to be pinched periodically in return for getting 30 to 40% of my time back
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to work on the things that I know are really important.
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That's the answer.
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It's completely addictive.
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Yeah, it is.
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That's exactly right.
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And better to be addicted to dropping things from your work list than a lot of other things.
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That is it can fear.
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That is it can worry.
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Absolutely.
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And draw.
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An early heart attack and cholesterol and going home, bummed out and, and, and,
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Lenova shared evidence requested from the man who Clone Skiing is having an amazing time.
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Yeah, you may not have a problem back yet yet.
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You may feel an effort in theiricional to any of the things you want these days.
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So, in comparison, you can, you want to contribute a lot to your local content.
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And there's actually a lot to see about this invitation forub безопасism.
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important topic and Wendy and I wanted to be a little bit more expansive with it.
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Hope it was worth your time.
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Thanks so much.
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Write us and let us know what your experience is.
Topics Covered
project management
delegation strategies
paperwork reduction
electronic document management
project templates
efficiency in project management
meeting logistics
status reports
team collaboration
boss-employee communication
task delegation
project kickoff meetings
digital project libraries
project management office (PMO)
workplace efficiency