The hidden cost of delegation

When there's too much work to do yourself, it may be time to delegate: You can assign the task to one of your team, hire outside help, or even make a new internal hire.

But there's a hidden cost of delegation you should be aware of.

Because the ideal of delegation contains an important contradiction:

• You'd like someone to do it for you. Just take the task from you, get it done, and come back with everything finished.

• But you also want them to do it the way you would have done it.

The more you care about how it's done, and the more you care about the specific details of the implementation, the more time you'll have to spend in training, or at least in communicating your wishes.

The alternative is to address that contradiction in one of two ways:

1. Work out an efficient system by which you can get the work done yourself.

2. Decide to care less about how it's done and more about the outcome you aim to achieve.

There's a third option, too: Once you recognize the cost of doing it yourself and/or delegating, you might decide that the task is not worth doing, at least right now.

And that's totally okay. Picking your battles wisely is a valuable skill.

All the best,
A.