Give it to the person who always finds a way.
The urgent request. The difficult client. The last-minute change. The task nobody has properly explained.
They will manage.
And because they manage, next time you give it to them again.
At some point, you have to ask what you are actually building.
Being capable should create possibilities.
I value people who can take responsibility and get things done. In sport, business or a creative project, working with someone dependable makes an enormous difference.
But there is a habit worth examining: repeatedly using that person’s ability to compensate for everything we haven’t organised.
A missing instruction becomes their problem to interpret.
A late decision becomes their evening to rearrange.
An unclear handover becomes another situation they somehow resolve.
The work gets finished. Everyone moves on.
Except the same difficulty is now waiting for the next deadline.
Look at what they had to do to make it work.
An excellent result can hide a surprisingly awkward process.
Before deciding that everything worked beautifully, I want to understand what happened.
Did someone have the information they needed?
Could they make the necessary decisions?
Did they spend hours chasing something that should already have been available?
If a person delivers despite those difficulties, their contribution deserves recognition. The difficulties also deserve attention.
Otherwise, we quietly turn their extra effort into the expected way of working.
Let expertise improve the next attempt.
The person who repeatedly solves a problem probably has something useful to say about preventing it.
Ask them.
Perhaps the brief needs one additional detail. Perhaps approval is happening too late. Perhaps another person could handle part of the work if someone showed them how.
These are concrete changes we can make.
I would rather use someone’s experience to improve the process than keep congratulating them for surviving it.
That also gives other people room to develop. They need opportunities to take responsibility while support is available, instead of waiting until the most experienced person is absent and everything becomes urgent.
Reliability deserves a better response than another task.
Before automatically handing something to the person who always manages, I would pause.
Does this work need their particular expertise?
What are they already responsible for?
What can I clarify, provide or decide before asking them to begin?
Those questions belong to the person assigning the work.
I want capable people to have the conditions to do excellent work, contribute ideas and develop further.
If our answer to every complication is the same person’s name, we have some organising to do.
One place to start: make the instruction clear enough for someone else to act on it.
Silvia
Add comment
Comments