Executive Summary
As the financial advice industry began shifting from a sales-based model to a more sustainable asset management approach, advisors found their roles shifting along with it. With revenue rooted in more predictable, recurring income, many advisors were able to step off the relentless 'treadmill' of constant sales, allowing them to invest in growth by hiring staff and delegating tasks. Effective delegation, in turn, created a positive cycle, freeing advisors from lower-value activities so they could work on building and scaling their firms. "Delegate and let go" became a common mantra, with advisors encouraged to focus only on the highest-value tasks. Yet, even for advisors who understand the value of delegation, actually letting go is often easier said than done.
In the 151st episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards discuss the psychological challenges advisors often face when it comes to delegating tasks and the strategies that can make delegation more effective.
Despite the potential upsides of delegation, advisors typically face 3 psychological hurdles to overcome in order to delegate effectively. First, it can be hard to imagine that doing all of an advisor's least favorite tasks would be someone else's dream job (after all, if doing those tasks were so enjoyable, then advisors wouldn't be trying to delegate them in the first place!). Second, people generally enjoy working with those similar to themselves, which can make it tempting to hire a 'mini-me' with similar strengths and inclinations. However, doing so can unintentionally reinforce the advisor's reluctance to delegate disliked tasks. Finally, even if an advisor dislikes a particular task, they may still be the fastest (and most skilled) at completing it, creating an argument for the advisor to continue doing it. Together, these elements create a compelling case for not delegating at all. In reality, though, holding onto these less-favored, non-growth-related tasks can limit a firm's long-term capacity to scale.
The first 2 barriers can be addressed by hiring an 'opposite', rather than a 'mini-me'. For example, while it might seem natural to hire someone similar, bringing in someone who has complementary strengths – such as an operations-focused person who thrives on detailed follow-through – ensures that tasks the advisor may find draining are handled by someone who enjoys them. The third barrier – that no one else can complete a task as well or as quickly as the advisor – may hold true and can be challenging to overcome. Yet, advisors may still benefit from delegating the work, as once a task is offloaded, an advisor's time is freed up for more productive work – or even for taking additional time off! A highly leveraged advisor has more flexibility in shaping their day-to-day business operations.
Ultimately, advisors aiming to delegate effectively can benefit from focusing on a new hire's ideal strengths and aptitudes. Hiring and working with an 'opposite' can feel counterintuitive at first – a checklist-oriented person, for example, may 'just' complete their assigned tasks without exploring beyond the to-do list, which could feel foreign to an ideas-driven advisor. However, this dynamic can also be incredibly freeing. After all, someone who enjoys a particular set of tasks is more likely to take ownership and improve that process – and, by extension, contribute to the firm's long-term success!
Authors:
***Editor's Note: Can't get enough of Kitces & Carl? Neither can we, which is why we've released it as a podcast as well! Check it out on all the usual podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts (iTunes), Spotify, and Stitcher.
Show Notes
- Kolbe Index
- Working Genius
- Dan Sullivan
- John Bowen On Team And Business Development
- Delegate / Automate / Eliminate Framework
- How I Finally Learned To Delegate By Creating Video Tutorials With Screencasting Software
Kitces & Carl Transcript
Carl: Michael Kitces.
Michael: David Carl Richards III.
Carl: That's right.
Michael: Right. DCR III. I keep wanting to say DCF because I love my discounted cash flow. So I have to come back to you're not the spreadsheets. You're the...
Carl: Thank you. Thank you.
Michael: ...DCR not DCF.
Carl: That's how I'd like to be addressed from now on. At all FPA events, if I'm a speaker, I'd like you to come back afterwards and say...
Michael: DCR III?
Carl: No. David Carl Richards III.
Michael: So we have to say the whole thing out.
Carl: Yeah, the whole thing.
Michael: Not the Star Wars acronym.
Carl: Every time.
Michael: Okay.
Carl: I've worked 50 years to get rid of that. So it's funny that it's coming back. So listen, we had this fun chat earlier today on the day that we're recording. We had 1 of the monthly workshops at The Society of Advice. And 10 out of 12 months, I have a guest. And today, we had you.
Michael: Yay.
What Really Holds Advisors Back From Delegating? [01:16]
Carl: And the team prepared this bio. I mentioned it on the call. It was 4 1/2 pages long. So I only read a little bit of it because we figured everybody knew you. But we got in this really fascinating discussion I think would be helpful here. We were talking about hiring, but I think it's even easier just to think about around delegation. So, whether you're delegating to a contract worker or an outsourced person or somebody you hire. Because the thing I notice among a lot of advisors, this is certainly true for me, is I have some things I really want to do and often, I don't have enough time. And so, the first thing I do is make a list of things that I want to stop doing. I call it my stop-doing list. I'm sure that was maybe a dance hall thing or something, the stop-doing list. And then I think, "Okay. What can I delete?" That's where I start, what can I delete? Just get rid of...bump, done. Hey, you know what? Let's just stop doing it.
Michael: Stop getting things done.
Carl: There may be things that I'm doing that literally don't need to be done anymore. So, once I get rid of all the things I could delete...and this is a never ending process, right? Once I get rid of the things I could just delete and stop doing, I move up to these things that we could automate. And there may be some things you can automate. And then there's the pile of things still left. And some of them I have to do. But before I start doing them, I want to see what I could delegate. So delete, automate, delegate.
And when we get to delegate, we run into, uh-oh, there's this whole thing that happens. The how-to, the tactical piece, we can certainly talk about a little bit. But as in all things, it's relatively simple not to be confused with easy. There's some pretty simple things you could do to delegate. The reason delegation feels hard to me, and it came up in today's call, is there's some feelings around it.
Michael: Feelings?
Carl: Yeah, feelings. And you are the king of feelings.
Michael: Clearly.
Carl: So I wanted to talk today about your feelings and what feelings you've noticed as you've delegated. And then what feelings you've noticed. What stands in the way. Set aside tactics just for a minute. Let's pretend we know how to do it and we're still not doing it. What are the things that stand in the way? What are the things that got in your way?
The Merits (And Drawbacks) Of Hiring Your Opposite [03:47]
Michael: So, you kind of pretend that we know how to do it. I do think there is an aspect for a lot of us that we really don't know how to do it...
Carl: Right.
Michael: ...not well. Not in the way that really helps a person actually understand what do they need to do it and how do they do it to your standards and your expectations, and how do you make sure that they're getting it done well, which leads to a lot of woes around delegation that come back to some version of, "They can't do it as well as I do. They'll never be able to do it as well as I do. I can just do it faster myself than taking the time to teach someone else to do it." I see a lot crop up there that maybe we can come back to in a moment.
Getting more directly to your question though about my journey through this, for me, it was not that. I had some challenges with that later because I really had never learned how to actually delegate and what to do. So I had to learn that. But when I was getting going in the industry in the 2000s, I feel like it was sort of the first wave of advisory firms beginning to scale recurring revenue models where we weren't just all out there selling all the time, right, because that treadmill race never ends. We were starting to build advisory firms. We had these recurring revenue assets, our management models. At some point, you wake up on January 1st and you got a decent amount of revenue and you could hire someone in the business to do things for you to delegate to so you can go out there and do more and grow the business and be your awesome self. And there was this kind of mantra that started showing up in the mid to late-2000s that was something to the effect of just spend all your time on your highest and best use, delegate and let go of the rest, right? And folks like Dan Sullivan at Strategic Coach have taught this for a very long time as well. I feel like it was really coming into the broad advisor domain that this was the thing. And so...
Carl: Just quickly, that was also largely around... I remember John Bowen's work around this, client-facing activities.
Michael: Yeah. I mean, nominally the implied, your highest and best use is going out and growing the business and getting more clients. Or, maybe it's serving the clients and being awesome for them and let go of the administrative work, but all built around there's definitely some things that you do on the list of things that you do every day as a solo that you probably should not be doing. They are not your highest and best use of your time.
Carl: True.
Michael: And so, the practical advice, at that point, was usually something to the effect of, so sit down, make a list of all the things you do all day, all week long, figure out which ones you really don't like doing and don't want to do. And that list of all the things that you can't stand and want to get rid of is now the job description for your first employee. And now by definition, they're doing all the things that you wanted to get rid of and you're doing more things that are in your higher and best use. And at a basic level, I actually think it's very sound advice for someone that's trying to figure out their first hire, their first full-time hire, even their first part-time hire, what do you delegate? Well, just make a list of all the things and whatever it is that feels soul-sucking and drains your energy, there you go. That's what you let go of first.
And the challenge I had with this framework around practice management advice, right, you were kind of asking around mindset issues and blocking points. I wasn't stuck on the end of, "Well, if I give it to them, are they going to do it as well as I can? Or, it takes too much time." I was stuck in a very different version of it, which is, so I'm making a list of all the things that I think are terrible things to do. And I'm making it someone else's job to do those things. That sounds like something a terrible person would do. Who makes a list of things that suck and say, your problem now, welcome to the company. Truly, I can joke about it now in retrospect, but I felt this very viscerally real-time. It felt awful to say, "I've got a great idea. Let's hire someone and make them do all the things that I hate to do." And it stopped me for years, literally years from hiring, from expanding the team, from delegating in any material way, because I just didn't want to be my mental script version of a terrible person who thinks up things that they don't like doing, then make someone else do it.
Carl: Yeah. You just felt guilty.
Michael: Yeah. Guilty, bad about myself as a person. It was a really negative thought cycle. I mean, even guilt is probably too generous. I'm like, if the world ever found out that I made a list of things that I hate doing and made someone else do it, my reputation would be destroyed. Guilt was too mild, this is reputational risk
Carl: Right.
Michael: I'm putting in air quotes for anybody who's listening: I'm one of "those people" that makes a list of terrible things, then makes it someone else's problem.
Carl: Well, what did you do to fix that? How did that change?
Michael: What changed for me was... I guess the realization in the truest sense, it turns out not everyone's like me and some people are wired a little bit differently.
Carl: Turns out.
Michael: Turns out. And it turns out that there's a list of things that I think are absolutely terrible to do that other people actually like and feel like they had a good day when they do it. It was very draining for me to get through our billing process and all the invoicing and all the billing and then check back and make sure all the checks cleared and monitor the accounts receivable. And it turns out there's people who like keeping books and do invoicing. They come in, they got a list of things to do. They check them off. They feel awesome at the end of the day that all the things checked off and the books balanced and the numbers are all clean and foot to the penny. And then they go home really happy at the end of the day because that was what they enjoyed doing. And then they live their lives and do whatever they're doing at home. There's this whole thing around billing and invoicing that was such a drag for me, and I don't have to feel guilty about delegating it. Now, I do if I find someone who doesn't like bookkeeping, because then I'm really dumping my stuff on them. But if I go find a person who actually likes bookkeeping, this is just kind of a given. "How would you like to do books, things that you already like doing, but I'll pay you for it, would that be cool?"
Carl: Right. It's really so interesting. I think this is a more common story in our heads than we think. It sounds pretty simple when you hear it talked about like this. Yeah, of course, there are people who like to do things. There are people who like to do things differently than I do, but it takes a while to figure that out. It was interesting. One of the people in The Society of Advice workshop we did today, Ian, said that...and I can't remember his exact example. But he had somebody who told him, "Hey, I love doing that. That thing that you don't like, I love doing that." And in fact, she went on to say, "In fact, I was kind of worried that you might be getting ready to get rid of me because you weren't giving me that thing." You know? And I think…
Michael: Because she was wanting to do things. "Please give me things to do. Otherwise, I don't feel like I'm respected as an employee because you're not giving me things to do."
Carl: Yeah. And I can clearly see that you don't enjoy that. I actually quite like it, right? And I remember I had that exact same experience around brainstorming. I thought everybody loves to brainstorm.
Michael: Oh, yeah.
Carl: It was actually when I first got told. This was somebody who was working with me. She had been working with me for 2 years, incredibly important part of the business. And she said to me after 2 years once... Because this used to be almost every phone call, "Well, what about this? And let's think about this." And I thought it was great. I thought I was including her in the process. I thought I was doing all the things I'd read about the book. I thought all that. And she finally came to me and said, "When you do that, it really causes me a lot of anxiety because I don't like it at all because the whole time, I'm literally thinking, 'What am I supposed to do?'" She's trying to get direction.
Michael: She's trying to figure out what to do. And you're spinning in a new direction every 30 seconds to do a different thing.
Carl: We're just wondering right now. Don't do anything, right? It was fascinating to me. So it really changed... "Wow, there are people who don't like that." And the last story I'll tell about this is I had an executive assistant at the office once that went to get food for lunch for clients. And when she came back, there were no drinks. And I remember saying, "Hey, what about the drinks?" She said, "Nobody asked for drinks." And I remember being annoyed at first, and then I realized, wait, she was so good at checklists. She didn't want to make the checklist. She didn't want to think about whether that was a way to improve the checklist. That's a different skill. She was really, really good at making checklists, which, if you have lots of ideas and nobody likes to get anything done...I don't know if you know this, but that's a bad business model. So, those people who like to get things done are actually insanely valuable. It's not like one is more important than the other. So I just think that idea of "Wait, there are things that other people love to do," so that's how you got over the idea that you were feeling a little bad about piling your garbage on somebody else.
Michael: Yes. But I want to stay in that example for a moment, because I think there's a real power. So that example in the context that you just gave. So when I think about how most people that I know would respond to that situation, really, I got to hire someone who thinks more for themselves. How could you not realize that? I need someone who's more motivated. I need someone who cares more about the success of our firm, that they would be conscientious enough to realize that our clients need drinks and not just the food.
Carl: Right. Totally.
Michael: Right. Young people these days, don't they get it? You have drink with food, come on. And all the different ways that we can get negative on the person. See, it proves me right that you just can't hire good talent these days.
Carl: Yeah. Can you believe it? She didn't even bring drinks.
Michael: Your version of how I framed it, I sort of appreciate the way you kind of owned it to say, if I hired a person who's really good at getting things done, it's on me to tell them the things that need to get done. If I want a good getting-things-done person, here's the deal, they'll get all the things done. And my commitment is I will remember to ask for food and drink. I got to do a little more work to ask for the food and drink. The good news, I don't have to do anything after that because they're going to go out there and get stuff done. But that's part of the trading equation here, because if you want someone who thinks of all that stuff as well, they're going to have ideas of their own. And if they have ideas of their own, then you're going to have the other problem, which is, well, I really wish you would just do it my way.
Carl: Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was going to say is I could tell you another story about saying that. I asked somebody to do something. I came back and they did it a completely different way. And I was like, "Couldn't you just do it...?" So I love the idea. A lot of this, for me, came from understanding that Kolbe index. That person, I can't remember her name, her Kolbe score, she had a nine on what's called Follow Thru the blue. She had very, very low on the red, which is called Fact Finder. So she didn't get…
Michael: She won't seek out the information of what she needs, but she is going to do what's on her list.
Carl: Which I think is awesome. And I think one of the reasons we're more prone to just complain about it is, it shifts a little bit of the burden to... It's fun to have more places to hide if things get done wrong. It's a little bit harder to hide if the idea is, "Look, I don't need you to make strategy. I need you to implement it. And by the way, you love implementing." Somebody who wants to make strategy, that's not the right place for them. They'll be unhappy.
Michael: But again, I think there's a corollary that goes with this, which is if you want the getting-things-done person, you do have to accept that it's on you to give them a list of things to do.
Carl: Yeah.
Michael: And if you want someone who's going to help you figure out the list of things to do, that's okay, but they're going to come with their ideas, which means you have to be ready to compromise and work with them on the shared ideas. You don't get to say, "Well, I want you to have ideas..."
Carl: "Have ideas, but only like mine."
Michael: "...but only when they're the same as my idea." That's a version of how that shows up. That is problematic. Either you want to do this more collaboratively. You want someone who thinks of their own stuff and you're ready to work with them to compromise around it, or you want your things your way, which is totally fine. But then, it is on your shoulders to just be clear in expressing what you want, every time the way that you want it. And if you've got a good checklist person, then the food pick-up checklist just has an addition to the checklist that says, "Ask about drink order." And now, every single time they're going to come back and say, "Oh, I was about to go get the food. Did you want drinks with that?" Because you put it on the checklist, they're going to faithfully do the checklist.
Carl: Yeah, that's totally true.
Michael: But that's on you to say, okay, if I want a person who does the things that I ask them to do, that's fine. But then, you have to own that you've got to make the list of what the things are that you want and just practice how clear you can be about expressing those. If someone doesn't get it right the first time, at least improve the process so they'll get it right the next time. "Oh, you forgot the drinks? Well, let's change the checklist to say, "ask for a drink order." And this problem will never happen again."
How To Clearly Set Expectations When Delegating [18:52]
Carl: Yeah, exactly. I love that idea of well, if there's a mistake, rather than thinking that person didn't do it right, think what was it about my action, how and what way was I complicit in this result? "Oh, well, I didn't ask for drinks. Okay, well, we can fix that. Let's put it on the list." And I think the biggest mistake I've ever made in delegation and the teeny bit of hiring, but it's mainly delegating, is delegating to outsourced or projects is the second version of that, that you pointed to, which was, the person where you just say, "I don't know exactly what I want you to do, just come in and figure it out." Well, there are people who are really good at that, and there are other people who are like the checklist person. So, I think just figuring out what is it that you're solving for and are you getting the right kind of person?
And I think in job descriptions, this came up today in the workshop. And I remember seeing Ramit Sethi do this really, really well. In his job descriptions, he would say things like, "Are you the kind of person...?" He would use those words, "Are you the kind of person who just loves having a checklist in front of them and then check...?" And where we started with this was it's hard for some of us, if you're not that kind of person, it's hard for you to believe that there are people reading that going, "Oh, my gosh, yes. I love just checking things off at the end of the day, or I love organizing files or I love taking all of..." I can't imagine going into the Airtable database that we've built for all my content. It's got 8,000 pieces of data in it now. Every single video, every single sketch, every single column, every single thing is organized in there. I can't imagine going in there to find a piece of gold because there's a lot of garbage in there, but there's hopefully some gold. Who should do that? Well, not me. But guess what? There's somebody like a librarian who would love to go in there in a catalog place with the windows closed. And so, I just think that where we started here was there are people who love stuff that you don't like.
Michael: And the extension I would give that relative to particularly how I see this show up in the industry, if you're looking for someone that likes the things that you don't like, right, that'll take the things that you want to let go of and actually come to that excitedly and positively, the one place you won't find that is hiring mini-me. Which I find is the number 1 hire that most advisory firms try to make first. I just need someone to help out with the things that I do. I basically want me, 5, 10, 20 years ago, depending on your age at the time that you're making the request. I just want a mini version of me who's a little bit younger and earlier in their career, who can take on a bunch of this stuff that I don't have time for.
And the irony to me, particularly when this crops up in the context of most advisory firm business owners... "So let me get this straight. You have this problem because you run your own firm and can't work for anyone else. And you want to hire a person just like you, who's going to want to work for you, like you? You wouldn't want to work for you. Why would mini-you want to work for you? And you just said, you don't like doing these things. Why would mini-you like them any more than you? You don't like them. That's why you're trying to hire someone." And I find a lot of us have this tendency to try to hire mini-me just at an earlier stage of career where it's "okay" to delegate some things to them that you don't want to do in your senior position." When most of the time, the first hire isn't a mini-you. It's like Bizarro-you. It's opposite you. It's someone that likes all the things you don't like, which probably also means they hate the things that you do like, right. As you had a getting-stuff-done person and you started brainstorming with them and stressed the heck out of them because they don't find brainstorming fun. They find getting things done and checking off boxes fun. And brainstorming was not their happy space, but it's your happy space. So if you hired a brainstorming partner, you'd both think a lot and nothing would get done. Instead, you hire a getting-things-done person, but then you have to be cognizant not to brainstorm with them. Brainstorm yourself, think of the things you want at the end of the brainstorming and then give them a list of things to do. Or, find a brainstorming buddy that's not them and brainstorm with them and then come back with the list of things to do.
So, it gets to your point, Carl, at getting really clear about the kind of person that you really need in the role. Which, if you haven't done it before, might mean working with consultants or even just bouncing a job description off of an advisor friend. Just say, "Does this sound like a person or a unicorn?" Because I want them to be really good at all the details and really good at all the follow-through, but also really adaptable to not have to follow the system. We don't need the system. And I need them to always ask questions if I might have forgotten something, but then not ask questions when I don't want them to ask questions, because I just want them to do the thing that I want them to do. You can't have someone who leads with all those things at the same time. We're only so human here. So tools like Kolbe, to me, are great around this because they evaluate people on a couple of dimensions. And you literally can't be good at all the things at once. So, it helps you to get clearer about what you need help with.
Working Genius from Patrick Lencioni is another one that I've become a super-fan of in our hiring process, because it essentially kind of evaluates people on 6 stages of how work gets done from the ideation people to the get-it-done across-the-finish-line people at the end. And what they found in their framework, there's 6 steps, there's 6 layers to the process. And most people are only ever good at 2. And they tend to get really frustrated by 2.
Carl: What are you going to choose?
Michael: You have to pick which ones... If you're going to make a job description, you have to pick which 2 they're going to be good at. And it forces you to pick 2 that they're going to be bad at, or at least that they aren't going to enjoy as much. And I find it helps force clarity that I can't actually go for a unicorn who does everything magically that I want at once. But I could find a particular person that does a particular set of things and brings a particular skillset well and then leverage that to the extent possible. I'm going to hire a getting-things-done person. I'm not going to make them my brainstorming partner.
Carl: Yeah, I think that's super-important. So in terms of delegating, what we've covered, just as we wrap up here is the idea, the story that we all tell ourselves in our heads. Because indeed, it would make you a bad person if you were making a list of stuff that you hate to do and you knew everybody else hated to do it and you would welcome them to…
Michael: Do it anyways because you have the money and the power.
Carl: Yeah, but that's just the story. Turns out, just about everything that you do not like to do in the professional setting, there is somebody who loves it. And by the way, is probably way better at it than you because they love it.
Michael: And they also hate the things that you do. It goes both ways.
Carl: That's exactly right. In fact, most likely, there are things that you love to do that they just really dislike. And then the second thing is just beware of mini-me because that seems to be the easiest thing. You think that you want to hang out with people like you. And so therefore, you should hire people like you. And it's just terrible. Never works. Never works because they don't want to do…
Michael: The reason you work for yourself and no one else.
Carl: Exactly.
Michael: So why do you think mini-you is going to be any different in that regard?
Why Delegating Matters (Even If No One Else Does It 'Better') [26:53]
Carl: For sure. Well, there's a lot more to talk about, but I think that's a good place. Well, actually, let me just ask you one last question. Is there any anything else you think really that's worth talking about in terms of why we don't delegate? And we're not talking about the tactical piece of how to, but why you don't?
Michael: I think we touched on it lightly. The other one that I see come up so often is some version of, "No one can do it as well as I can."
Carl: All right.
Michael: It's just faster for me to do it myself.
Carl: Yeah, yeah. And that, that to me, the way I've been thinking about that, because I really struggle with that one. And it's not that I think nobody could do it as well as me. It's the second part. It's just faster to do it myself than to try and find somebody else. And I've had this conversation with an author that everyone listening would know and speaks 50 times a year, has a crazy high speaking fee, books all his own travel, right.
Michael: Oh...
Carl: Signs all his own contracts, replies to his own email, doesn't have anybody that works for him, nobody. Has a great book agent, but nobody else. And when I asked him about it, it's 100%. He's like, "Well, I don't understand. It takes me an hour a month. I do it every third Thursday at noon or something. I go in, take care of all my travel." He's like, "I don't understand." And that works for him because that's all he really wants to do. He doesn't have anything else.
Michael: He doesn't have any other pressure on his time or other additional things he's trying to do to grow the business or put his time elsewhere. Okay.
28:40-29:04
29:36-30:10
Carl: Yeah. So every once in a while, I feel a little guilty when I'm trying to get rid of things because I'm like, "Well, so-and-so does it. And so-and-so does it." In fact, I did this a couple of weeks ago. I was like, "I'll just do it." And somebody else on the team said to me, "Yeah. If you do that, you're right, you'll get it done faster now. But we won't be building the flywheel for the future." The idea that, yeah, it's true, you probably could just do it faster now. But that time and that money that you would spend to get it handed off correctly, even if it takes multiple times, which it will...it takes multiple times to get to the point where it's done the way you want it done, that's an investment, right, not an expense.
Michael: Yeah. I just hear a lot of it's just faster for me to do it. Look, if it's really a thing you do rarely, okay. But when it's something that you do repeating on an ongoing basis, this stuff just adds up. Sitting down for a version of that as well, "It's not that bad. It takes me an hour a week." An hour a week's for 50 weeks a year is a fricking week of vacation that I'm spending doing a thing that's just a billing process I could hand to someone. And that was pretty much the end of me doing contracting agreements, invoicing and billing. An hour a week didn't seem like a big deal, but delegate it to an administrative support person for an extra week of vacation suddenly sounded a lot better because that's what it adds up to really, really quickly. If it's something that you do repeatedly, which, for my end, I didn't have any time to train and had no system and process either. I just started turning on screen shares and just narrated what I'm doing. "Okay. I'm doing the agreements process. So here's me navigating to the folder. See where it is? Here's me opening the template of the document." So, I grab the document and I type "save as" and then I always put the name of the client and then the agreement and then the date of it. And I hit save. Then, here's the places in the document that I edit, because I'm just literally saying it out loud what I'm doing on the screen. And then I just do it in the same time it takes me to do it myself anyways. But at the end, I have a narrated training video that I hand to someone else. And I didn't have to do it anymore because now, they've got an exact walkthrough of exactly how I do it. And they can ask me questions if they get stuck. And that was where it started.
And what I found and realized over time was that the overwhelming majority of scenarios where I got frustrated because someone did not do it the way that I wanted it to be done, the dirty truth was because I did a crappy job of actually explaining my expectations. And I had to get better at really articulating, "Here are the things I care about. Here are the things that are important. Here's the other part of how you do this that's really important that I need you to pay attention to as well." And the more I practiced just being super-clear and explicit that I need it to be done this way, then it got a lot easier and it got done that way.
Carl: Yeah, yeah. And I think like we were talking about earlier, that there are people in the Kolbe world, we'd be talking about a little bit of red and I'm way oversimplifying. So those of you who are Kolbe geniuses, please don't send me emails. I know. But in the Kolbe world, this idea of Fact Finder, there are people who could then take that same screen share and go, "Hmm. Oh, could we tweak that a little bit and work with the executor, blue person, that just gets things done and say, 'I think we could improve that a little bit?"' And I found we find ourselves saying that a lot. "Hey, this is the way we do it now. Please just do it. But if you see things that you think could improve here, let's talk about them." And so then, we get back to this concern you brought up right here at the end, which is, it turns out that things actually can get done as well as you if you do a good job explaining it and getting those expectations out of your head like I expected drinks. "Well, how was I to know that?" "Well, it might be common sense to you, but it's not common sense to the person going to get the drinks."
Michael: It's like, be aggravated you don't have drinks. Take a deep breath and then say, "Okay. I guess we need to add, 'ask for drinks' to the checklist."
Carl: Turns out, you didn't ask. So how am I complicit in the results I'm getting? Even if it seems ridiculous to you, it's still much more helpful.
Michael: Because what's natural to you is not natural to other people. That's why they like things that you don't like and you don't like things that they like. It fits that way because they don't think about it exactly the way you do. That's the point.
Carl: So good. Thanks, Michael.
Michael: Thank you, Carl. Appreciate it. Cheers.
