{"id":7475,"date":"2024-05-07T13:37:30","date_gmt":"2024-05-07T13:37:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tup.kxe.temporary.site\/how-to-effectively-delegate-tasks-and-manage-projects\/"},"modified":"2024-05-07T13:37:30","modified_gmt":"2024-05-07T13:37:30","slug":"how-to-effectively-delegate-tasks-and-manage-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/okdesign.ca\/fr\/how-to-effectively-delegate-tasks-and-manage-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"How to effectively delegate tasks and manage projects"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Early in my career, I was surprised when a co-worker told me they didn\u2019t realize I wanted them to complete a task that I thought I had asked them to complete.<\/p>\n

In hindsight, I now know that my language was vague. We were in a meeting, and I said something like, \u201cAlex, I think it would be helpful if we could cut the data in a different way to figure out what\u2019s really happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t specifically ask Alex to look at the data differently, did I? So Alex didn\u2019t do it. When I asked Alex a few days later, they had no idea that I had expected them to follow up.<\/p>\n

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When I relayed my surprise to a mentor a few days later, he offered me some advice that has helped me both personally and professionally. He said, \u201cJustin, if you don\u2019t specifically ask someone to do something, you can\u2019t expect them to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve thought a lot about that advice over the last 15+ years, and it\u2019s served me well in a few ways.<\/p>\n

Eliminating ambiguity with explicit requests<\/h2>\n

When I want someone to do something, I try to explicitly ask them to do it. I try to be as clear as possible in my request and double-check to make sure it is clear. I try my best to document the fact that I\u2019ve asked for it. Documenting the request is probably the most important step, and it can be done with a follow-up email, a follow-up Slack message or the creation of a task in a project management tool like Asana, Trello or JIRA.<\/p>\n

In my personal life, my wife and I know that if we really want the other person to do something, we need to explicitly ask as well. We\u2019ve tried to transition our language to each other from \u201cMaybe we should do X\u201d and \u201cI think you should do X\u201d to \u201cCan you do X by Thursday?\u201d and \u201cI want you to do X.\u201d It\u2019s not perfect, but it\u2019s better, and it helps us set and meet each other\u2019s expectations more often.<\/p>\n

Dig deeper: How to make the most of your marketing work management solution<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Anticipating needs<\/h2>\n

My teams and I have been able to surprise and delight our co-workers or stakeholders when we deliver something of value to them that they didn\u2019t explicitly ask for. <\/p>\n

We anticipate what needs to be done when others have not expected it, showing proactiveness that they have not experienced before. We follow up after a meeting with an email or a Slack to ask, \u201cWould you like us to do X?\u201d or we open a ticket, assign it to ourselves and add our stakeholder as the requestor.<\/p>\n

Establishing transparent workflows<\/h2>\n

Providing stakeholders with visibility and transparency about the work my team is doing, especially our prioritization process, has drastically increased stakeholder satisfaction and improved cross-functional relationships.<\/p>\n

As mentioned above, a project management tool like Asana, Trello or JIRA can do wonders. Stakeholders can see:\u00a0<\/p>\n