Jan 27 (edited) in General discussion
Delegate then Automate
***Notion Template at Bottom***
(Attached are the two best pieces of practical and useful content I've found for delegation.)
I’m going to be doing some things on delegation over the next few weeks. This comes as my team and I try to automate our processes to a higher level. I think at this moment in technology doing an automation review every 6 months minimum (we have a goal of quarterly.) This is the first year we are doing this so I expect this to also be the most challenging year as we have no practical experience running this system yet.
So why am I doing things focused on delegation and not automation. My belief is that delegation comes first. I want to understand my processes well enough to explain them to someone else and provide them resources to complete the task unsupervised.
Why? Who cares if I am just going to automate them?
I’ve asked people to run systems and have had the systems improve substantially more than just jumping to building the automations. How long until we have self optimizing AI processes? Not sure but until then I like to have someone else look over them. Here are some of the most useful responses:
Why don’t we make XYZ changes? It’s rarely a bad idea to have more people look at your project. It’s rarely a good idea to have more people with final say in a project. Meaning have as many people execute what you created, take their feedback but understand in the end you or whoever you’ve assigned to the project should have final say.
I completed the task, what was the goal of that? This is the biggest red flag because it indicates a potential to eliminate a meaningless task entirely. If something doesn’t provide value you either change it or stop it, which is harder than most people realize.
Why don’t we just use XYZ native feature of the tool? Usually native features I think are the best option if they can provide close to the same process. If you can keep things contained you get less errors. If your running something through Zapier/Make/Custom Code/Etc. the more connections it has to move through the higher likelihood of something going wrong. Don’t hear what I’m not saying. If you’ve tested the workflow and know it works then it is likely to work consistently. However if Open AI or Google or Notion have an outage than that workflow is not going to work. More variables, more potential for entropy.
The other benefit of delegation is that there are things that I haven’t been able to automate…Yet. These things get handed off, and that is made easier through having established systems in place for optimal delegation. People know the process of delegation and how to operate in the system. It makes the handoff simple. Based on the volume of communication they know me and the company, they know things I’m going to be excited about, more importantly they know my blind spots, they know the things I’m prone to missing. Lean into that, figure out metrics for success and if they are competent give them control over the system and repeat.
Here is the Notion Template we use to keep our onboarding process simple for VAs that join our team. Onboarding is a crucial piece of the puzzle for making sure VAs understand the goal and process of each task. Our belief is that process raises the floor of failure on a company and at an individual level raises the floor of competence. Great systems and hard work will take you almost anywhere you want to go. Add in tools for optimization and you can maximize your potential. If you do all that with the right people, then you can change the world.
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Delegate then Automate
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