… When it doesn’t work.
While reinventing CentralGadget.com as TechNews.biz (yeah, that’s the new name for the site), I found that the categories on the site had been screwed up.
This is part of the problem with delegation at times. The old adage, if you want something done right, do it yourself, is impossible at a startup. It just doesn’t work all of the time, because you want to do everything yourself, and that’s impossible… there’s too much work to do.
But, when you do assign the task back to the person that screwed it up, it can wind up taking more time. Worse, the person that did the work (in this case) was a flakey freelancer that bolted long ago.
In short, this is one of the problems with a startup, more than it is with delegating in and of itself. Even when you have working sites, and profits coming in, you still wind up having to do stuff that you wish you could delegate away with confidence. Unfortunately, the people that you have placed confidence in, usually have their plates full… it falls back on you to do it.
This past week I’ve run into quite a few people looking to start their own startups. I try to personalize what I wrote above to them, because most of the time you can tell instantly that they just don’t have what it takes. Part of being an effective delegator in a startup, means being able to pour every waking moment into getting the job done, until it is done. It doesn’t matter who screwed it up, your team has to be willing to do that… or they probably shouldn’t be working at a startup, and especially not leading one.