See if it will be faster to just do it yourself first

I’m well aware of the benefits of delegating.

Doing so empowers people, increases collaboration, builds trust, creates learning, fosters teamwork, grows skills, boosts moral and frees up people’s schedule to focus on core tasks.

What’s not to like?

When done properly, delegation can be wonderful thing.

But there’s a balance. Efficiency for efficiency’s sake is not an economic imperative. If we’re too quick to drop our problem into someone else’s lap without spending even a few moments to consider the bigger picture, familiarize ourselves with the solution and try to solve it on our own, then nobody wins.

Oftentimes what we think is delegation is merely shifting our problem around. Before reaching for the phone to offload our task to someone else, we should really consider if this is just an excuse to ask someone something we could have easily found out ourselves.

I think back to the hilarious meme, lmgtfy, which stands for, let me google that for you.

This acronym originated from software developers in the early two thousands. They were getting tired of constant requests from coworkers for answers to questions that a quick web search would easily provide.

And so, instead of giving actual tech support, they sent their questioner a link with a snarky animation that displayed the complicated process of searching the internet for their information, and then directed the user to the actual search results page.

Isn’t engineering humor the best? God bless those pagans.

I was the recipient of this joke a few times, and I felt like such a bonehead.

Oh duh, why would I even ask my developer a softball question like that?

But the upside to the lmgtfy meme was, the shame had a positive effect. You only needed to receive one of those snarky videos once or twice before you understood the problem of delegating too quickly.

Because you quickly realized, albeit it a sarcastic way, that forcing your little problem onto someone else came with a cost for both parties.

For example, imagine you send a direct message to the head of engineering with a basic technical question about your company website. That interruption almost certainly caused them to stop what they were doing, shift their focus, look into the issue, become familiar with it, and then get back to you with a reply.

Now, current research on workplace fragmentation says that it takes workers an average of twenty minutes for them to return to their original task after an interruption. Even if that estimate sounds high, it still means it would have been a better use of your time and theirs to just figure it out the answer yourself.

At least then you would never have to ask them again, and the engineering hatred index would remain low.

Are you too quick to drop your problems into people’s laps? Do you make it a habit to think something through twice before sending it off to someone else?

Remember, delegating too quickly can have as much of a negative effect as stubbornly insisting on doing everything yourself. Each person has to find their balance. Connecting and collaborating is a critical part of doing business, but so is building up your own sense of efficacy.

We live in an entrepreneurial world. Even if you’re not launching a company, knowing how and when to do things yourself is a lifelong skill.

What’s interesting about this principle is, it not only applies to small, daily tasks, but also larger projects. Here’s a case study from my career as a writer.

Years ago, a small publishing house reached out to me about doing a book together. I was happy to talk to them and excited about the possibility of working together. But after our first conference call, it was abundantly clear that publishing my next book with them would have taken a minimum of eighteen months, cost me thousands of dollars, caused me significant anxiety during the editorial process, and removed my intellectual property rights.

They offered zero advance and required me to do all my own marketing. And the collaboration would have locked me into a book contract with slightly higher upside than publishing myself, but with a much higher downside.

My thought was:

The idea of securing a new publisher is compelling, but why not just do it all myself, keep the money, publish four books under my own imprint in the same amount of time, and go focus my energies on more lucrative projects? The book industry is dead anyway.

We ultimately parted ways and didn’t pursue a book project together.

And nothing against them as a publisher, as several of my friends speak highly about their company. But the math simply add up for my situation.

In the words of one of my favorite filmmakers, no matter how many people you drag in with you to create that safety in numbers feeling you’re going for, at some point it’s going to be all up to you, and you need to be prepared for that.

Ultimately, be smart about advocating for yourself. Consider not factoring in anybody helping you at all. Rather than pursuing efficiency for efficiency’s sake, see if it will be faster to just do it yourself first.

And if the time comes where delegation and collaboration make sense, than reach out for help.

In the meantime, if have further questions about this, let me google that for you.

Do you have a habit of dropping your problems into people’s else’s laps without spending even a few moments to solve them yourself?