As a Fancy Hands user myself, this struck a chord.  I don't use it as much as I thought I would and exactly for the reasons he talks about.  People either think their task is too easy and not worth it, or it's too hard and only they can do it.

This got me thinking.  We don't learn how to delegate.

Delegation is not natural, it's a skill and an art.  Some of the most successful and note worthy people got to where they are due to their ability to let go of control and delegate.  Other would be great people got swamped and stressed due to the fact that they never let go of control and never learned the art of delegation. 

I will confess that I find it hard to delegate and ask for help.  Many times I take the "It'll be better if I do it myself attitude."  This is not good and as we say in the web world it's a habit that won't scale.  Delegation is a habit and like all habits it takes practice and discipline to get it right.  In fact, I think there are three dimensions to delegation that we have to master.

There are some things that you cannot delegate.  Going to the bathroom, eating, sleeping and your art.  Your art is the thing that you do that no else does, hopefully it's the thing you get paid for.  My art is being able to program and to take complicated business rules and requirements and boil them down to simple applications.  Maybe your art is customer service, blogging, serving the best coffee you can etc.  Once you know what you can't delegate, everything else is fair game.

Almost everything.  I like to stick by the 2 minute David Allen rule defined in Getting Things Done (http://amzn.to/9YYxQO).  If the thing you are trying to do can be done by you in 2 minutes or less, do it and do it then and there.  Else, Delegate.

This is the actual act of delegation.  Asking someone else to do something for you. This is also a skill / art that requires practice.  In the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen Covey talks about stewardship delegation in contrast to gopher (go-for) delegation.  

Stewardship delegations defines the rules of the game and the desired outcome but leaves the details to the delegated.  Gopher delegation is micromanagement at it's worst.  You define every step with so much detail you may as well do it yourself.  The more trust you have in the people you are delegating to the more natural stewardship delegation becomes but it takes practice and trust.

A service like Fancy Hands doesn't lend itself to this kind of delegation at the beginning since the trust is low and you have no idea who is doing the delegating, but if you listen to that interview I linked above you will get likely develop more confidence in their service. I did.  I have vowed to try to use this kind of stewardship delegation as much as I can.

Don't forget.  Ps and Qs go a long way in this step.

Putting on your shorts and shoes is great, but it will do you no good unless you go for a run. (Anne Fenwick Proverb)

You must take the plunge and start delegating!  Play the WTWTCH (What's the worst that can happen) Game.  For example, when I used the acronym WTWTCH, I hoped you read the explanation and chuckled at the ridiculous use of an acronym in that situation.  But maybe you didn't.  Maybe you think I'm an idiot and aren't even reading this anymore.  That's about the worst that can happen. So I did it.  Same goes for delegation.

Ask yourself What's the worst that can happen?

Okay, then ask someone else.

Yes, that's true.  However, use it as a chance to learn and get better at delegating.  Did you define the task enough?  Did you define it too much?  Did you give the person any resources or recommendations that might have been helpful?   Don't assume right away that because it wasn't done right it must be their fault.  It's likely partially or fully your fault.

That being said, if you have a mission critical report due in a few days and you need someone to check your references, then maybe you don't want to delegate that.  Maybe if you are writing a more casual memo and need some background info that would be a good one to practice with.  The more you delegate the better you will get at it and you will strengthen the habit of delegating.

Learning how to let go is one of the hardest things for us to do.  That's why great things happen when we do.

Thanks for reading.

Kent

(this email was delegated)

There has been a lot of speculation about why Google might have killed Wave, Dick Wall from the Java Posse threw out the idea that it could have been too much bandwidth compared to any return they were getting.  Maybe it just go too expensive for them.

I find that hard to believe.  I think Google would have done their homework on the costs of servers and made that decision a long time ago.  They gave Google Wave the show at Google I/O 2009 and it just seems weird that they didn't expect a flood of people to use it.  Which brings up the next scenario, maybe they really got it wrong.

Sometimes, even the experts make mistakes and maybe there really wasn't a clear path to market for Google Wave and given all of the pressure from Microsoft, Facebook etc they decided to start focusing on things with a clear revenue path, so Google Wave got the axe.  However, this doesn't seem right either.  Why would they spend so much of their time working on side projects and then kill off one of the coolest ones.  They had clear marketing problems and most people had no idea what to do at the beginning, however, if you used it for more than 5 minutes and invited some of your friends in, you realized pretty quick it was a game changer.  Take it up a notch and invite your co-workers and your boss and you have yourself a fantastic team collaboration app.

I have an idea.  Google is preparing for a Tsunami.

The more time I spent with Google Wave the more I realized it had the chance to become the killer application for small-medium business who already use Google Apps.  For example, being able to collaboratively write emails, documents, spreadsheets etc, are all things that companies do now only the process is inefficient and clumsy.  If this was tied more cohesively into one product that allowed authoring, collaboration, chatting, real time editing, emailing etc, it would become the dashboard for thousands if not millions of people around the world. 

However, Wave is open source.  A lot of what Google does is open source, but nothing really close to the chest is, or at least not all of the pieces.  Since they created wave to be so open, it would be hard for them to develop this kind of product and change Wave at the same time. 

Maybe they killed Wave so that they could focus on creating Tsunami. 

This is pure speculation.  Clearly there are so many factors that go into these kinds apps and decisions, many are over my head but selfishly, I really hope I am right.  In my consulting practice Google Apps is a godsend to clients, but they all keep asking for similar things.  They keep asking for a unified view that marries, Wave, Docs and Email. 

I think Google knows this and if they don't... consider them told.