Comments on: Do You Make This Mistake When Delegating Tasks?

By: Juuso Hietalahti

Juuso Hietalahti — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:14:26 +0000

@Jake: I think that it indeed is one’s duty to make sure that he knows what to do, and if the boss refuses to (or is simply incompetent or busy or whatever) give clear details, then you just gotta make educated guess. Perhaps tell the boss that “I’m going to choose option B and do at like this, and if that’s not okay, come to tell me what needs to be changed”.

With that being said, I still believe that bosses should be clear enough to give information on what the other needs (but not get into micro managing… since workers gotta take initiative and use their brain to get things done).

It can be a tricky issue sometimes.

By: Leadwerks

Leadwerks — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 02:44:00 +0000

Get everything done the best the first time. Otherwise you will just have to pay to get it done again.

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 01:54:18 +0000

This sounds like a complaint thread. So my question is what can you do about it. My boss is into short emails (he gets so many) but sometimes his meaning is not that clear so I’m going to tell him this so that he can tweak them in future to make them clearer.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:02:14 +0000

And then you get in trouble for both options of “do nothing while trying to get more specific instructions” and “start work so no time is wasted only to find out you did something ‘wrong’ later”.

By: Hakushi

Hakushi — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:15:41 +0000

That’s a nightmare for me those kind of tasks, it happens a lot in the web, sometimes the designer come by my desk and just says :’check the PSD on that folder and do the changes’.
99% of the time, got to go back to ask him more details… We just got a project manager, and things starts to get better, but as things change very quickly in the web industry (especially when it’s the core business of the company), it’s always like that, always somebody (designer, sales guy, integrator, content manager, …) to come by and ask you something that don’t make sense like “ok i need to flush the CDN in one click. Thanks” , ok and what about precising for which site, which cms, which files : video? audio? images?js?css?

Gonna kill some ants, brb.

By: psycho

psycho — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 20:10:49 +0000

Nice article.
In my experience, it’s a good thing to give a decision power to people, to let them do things how they think it’s right. It often works well, and I think people enjoy this much more than just following orders.
The only problem is that people must understand that they are free to do things as they want – otherwise, as you mention in the article, they become confused. Which brings a big frustration and less gets done.

I’d say: “Do your best, and if you are really stuck, feel free to come and ask me…”

By: tirminyl

tirminyl — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 16:59:25 +0000

I completely agree. My supervisor gave me a task recently but no details just a “you can check that folder in…”. Well, what project? What structure to follow? What request to use? I certainly don’t want to start work based on an assumption of what you want. Give me specifics.