Whether you are an employee, entrepreneur, contractor, or other, there comes the point where you need to scale your abilities.\u00a0 We can only do so much on our own.\u00a0 Thus, the need for extending effectiveness arises as soon as we try to do anything of substance.\u00a0 The trick is in finding ways to train others to produce a quality that is close enough to ours.<\/p>\n
It goes without saying that this problem is one faced by specialists and those in skilled positions.\u00a0 If your work is measured by time put in and the quality of your work is not a factor, then you scale by adding more resources.\u00a0 Thus, we can build assembly lines of low-skilled labor and scale that to create millions of products.<\/p>\n
In the world of business and IT, there are very few low-skill positions (if any).\u00a0 There are a few positions that are low-skilled that amount to data entry, but even those often require knowledge and experience to get the job done faster or better.\u00a0 Therefore, to grow our business, we need to be able to develop our people.\u00a0 We need to find ways to peel off some of the skilled labor we do, convert it to something that takes less skill, and pass it on to someone else.<\/p>\n
Good News.\u00a0 There is nothing new about needing to pass on skills to others or even the next generation.\u00a0 However, we do seem to forget about that as something that requires our attention.\u00a0 Our days\u00a0are full, and we quickly fall into the trap of being “too busy” to think about how to delegate.\u00a0 We need only look back a few decades to see industries driven by apprentice programs.\u00a0 These were the first way we looked into scaling our skilled labor.<\/p>\n
The first step in delegating those things that only you can do is to examine your tasks closely.\u00a0 There is often some form of “finishing touch” we put on our work while most of the functions could be done by anyone.\u00a0 Even a software\u00a0developer can have someone else write their code.\u00a0 This\u00a0procedure is quite a challenge\u00a0as it amounts to putting your thoughts down in a document.\u00a0 Nevertheless, it can be done, and the process is an excellent insight into delegating almost any responsibility.<\/p>\n
I recently wrote a tutorial on how to automate almost anything.\u00a0 The beautiful thing is that this process is practically the reverse.\u00a0 You have a method you follow as part of delivering a product or service.\u00a0 We can dissect it by reducing it to the steps we take.\u00a0 There will be steps that are hard to define like “think about the problem I am solving.”\u00a0 That is ok for now.\u00a0 We will parse that more another time.<\/p>\n
Once we have the first pass of steps, there are going to be concrete actions, and probably some “magic happens here” areas where we struggle to define our process.\u00a0 Those specific actions are where we move next.<\/p>\n
Those concrete actions are where we can most quickly scale out our process.\u00a0 The operations may require some level of skill.\u00a0 However, a well-defined task can be done with more ability through practice.\u00a0 We may be able to perform the work faster or at a higher quality than someone else.\u00a0 Fear not, that is a temporary setback.\u00a0 When we pull out that step and hand it off to someone else to do the work, we will also spend the time to review and assess their work.\u00a0 This is an investment in making the worker better at the task.\u00a0 At some point, we will be able to have our investment pay off in a job we can reliably hand off to another.<\/p>\n
Once we have a task or two pulled out to hand off, we can work on adding more to that list.\u00a0 This allows us to scale as others do those tasks better (through training or experience) and as we take things off of our plate.<\/p>\n
So, we define the actions we take, find some we can hand off, and then do so.\u00a0 We scale by repeating the process.\u00a0 Is it that simple?\u00a0 Yes, the procedure is not hard at all.\u00a0 It is the definition of the tasks that is often a challenge.\u00a0 Do not take my word for it.\u00a0 Where are you invaluable to your job?\u00a0 Spend some time to find at least one task you can hand to others and see how easy it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Whether you are an employee, entrepreneur, contractor, or other, there comes the point where you need to scale your abilities.\u00a0 We can only do so much on our own.\u00a0 Thus, the need for extending effectiveness arises as soon as we try to do anything of substance.\u00a0 The trick is in finding ways to train others […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[35,29,18],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-career","tag-growth","tag-team-building"],"yoast_head":"\n