There is no escape from the division of labor.
If you want to increase your output, you must be willing to delegate responsibility. You have to locate somebody who is willing and able to perform a task that is taking up too much of your time. Your time is valuable. The more valuable your time becomes, the more that you have to locate people who can assist you in those tasks that have lower value.
I have never been good at delegating responsibility. I have always assumed that I could do something better. I am not talking about things related to technologies. I am talking about things related to writing. I was never successful in locating someone who could do basic research and inform me of what he had discovered.
Even more important have been joint ventures. I have not been involved in a lot of them. The great roadblock in the joint venture is the individual who promises to be able to perform a task on a time schedule, but then who procrastinates to such a degree that he is unable to perform the task at all. He misses the deadline. Worse, he is resentful of the fact that I have pointed this out to him. He thinks he had a right to miss the deadline. Even when he does not have an excuse, he resents the fact that I am holding him to completing his task on time.
The higher that I have risen in notoriety, the more I have been approached by people who say that they can perform some remarkable task better than anybody else. If I will just turn over to him money, publicity, or whatever asset they lack in their achievement of some remarkable goal, they assure me that they will be able to deliver the goods.
I have found over the years that the more self-confident they are, and the more aggressive they are, the less likely they are to be able to perform at an above-average level, and especially perform on time.
One of the reasons for creating an organization that does not recruit from outside the organization is this: managers learn the capacities of those under their authority. Over years, they watch the performance of teams of workers. They learn the weaknesses of the workers. They know the limits of responsibility that these workers are capable of handling. They are not hotshots brought in from the outside.
There is one phrase above all others that places the project in jeopardy: "You can count on me." A manager had better learn from experience the extent to which he dare not count on the promise of a specific subordinate. The subordinate will have demonstrated a pattern of non-performance. Such employees should be dismissed early in their careers. They are a liability to the organization. But some people have the ability to deliver the goods as long as the degree of responsibility delegated to them is not too great.
BROKEN VOWS
The modern world has seen the marriage vows broken on a scale that would not have been believed two generations ago. Couples mutually promise each other: "You can count on me." Then one of them proves to be unreliable. The partner has borne the risk of delegating great responsibility to the spouse who then departs.
This attitude of non-performance in the most crucial human relationships has spread to the general population in the society as a whole. Less and less do any of us dare to count on anyone who promises: "You can count on me."
When you become dependent on someone who is not reliable, your own reputation can suffer if that person fails to deliver. I have found this to be the case repeatedly. Someone who claims to be capable of delivering the goods proves to be incapable. Then I have had to scramble to replace the unfulfilled promises of the hotshot who guaranteed to me that he could deliver the goods.
I have watched well-run charitable organizations lurch towards bankruptcy as a result of some hotshot who knew how to stroke the egos of the head of the organizations. "Just turn this organization over to me. You will not be sorry." The heads of the organizations learned the hard way. They had to rebuild.
Never trust anybody from the outside to come in and handle the money. This is a universal rule. The closer a person is to the checkbook, the longer you should have monitored this person's performance.
There is an old phrase: "Bright lights attract large bugs." I used to think this phrase was unduly harsh, but I have learned over the years that it is reliable. There are a lot of wanna-bes out there who believe that they can achieve enormous success as long as someone else bankrolls their pet projects. They will say anything that it takes to get their hands on the checkbook and the mailing list. They will promise the world, but they will not deliver.
The more important the project, the longer the subordinate should have been on the payroll. He should have demonstrated over years that he could handle delegated responsibility. I would have saved myself a lot of grief if I had recognized this early.
Sometimes, I had to roll the dice. I had to start something from the bottom on a short-term basis. I had to bring in people I hoped would be competent. On the whole, while I have been successful, there have always been people who promised the world and did not deliver. In retrospect, I understand that the more forcefully they promised to deliver, the less I should have trusted them. The more hesitant performers were the more reliable ones.
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