I've previously talked about how the size of your blocks determines how productive you are. In a nutshell, someone who builds a shed by planting trees to grow into lumber and mining the ore to make nails is going to be much less efficient than the person who buys a kit and assembles it from Home Depot. In this piece, I want to look at the size of blocks from a process design or work-flow standpoint. This is probably going to be a little abstract because it can apply to a number of different areas on many different levels. Regardless of what you do, you are responsible for creating processes and work-flows. These may be as simple as working out the process for cooking dinner or as … [Read more...] about Boxing Things Up
delegation
Learning to Delegate
When working with an assistant it can be difficult to learn to delegate. One way to practice is to find a task that they can't mess up. For example, getting quotes on a print job from a handful of print shops. Let them know that there isn't anything they can mess up and tell them you want them to handle the process on their own. Give them as much info as they need and ask them to clarify if they have any questions. Then turn them loose on the project and don't interfere. This is good practice for you and good practice for them. It will teach you both how to work together more efficiently. … [Read more...] about Learning to Delegate