Have you ever delegated a task or responsibility to a team member and they just totally flubbed it? There’s a reason why! In this episode of the Babies & Business Podcast, Rachel and Avram share a hilarious personal story that paves the way for 3 very important lessons on how to properly (and successfully!) delegate.

Show Notes

[02:03] Where everything went sideways

[03:18] The small assumption that ruined everything

[09:00] How blind spots stop delegation in its tracks

[09:40] The person responsible for a miscommunication

[10:00] 3 tools to improve your ability to delegate

Mentions & Resources

DH Core Values – We Create Together

Episode Transcription

Below you will find a transcript of this entire podcast episode. Enjoy!

Avram Gonzales: Welcome back it’s Avram and Rachel here. I’m about to tell you a story about how I damn near ruined six pounds of chili beans. Why is that important? You’re gonna see firsthand at our expense, just how terribly wrong something can go with a handoff from one person to another. It happened to occur in our household, but this happens in businesses every day.

Owners try to delegate something to team members. Team members try to delegate something to other team members. Where does it go wrong? What is it that actually happens? We were just so excited to share this story with you because, man, was it frustrating in the moment. Actually, I, was pretty upset about it, but I won’t give it all away.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, Absolutely. So. We had, um, a busy day, I was leaving the house and we had decided that we were going to make chili beans that day. We had decided the night before we had soaked the beans. I had the recipe. I was planning on making that recipe, but I asked you, would you like to do that for dinner tonight? It Just needs to be put in the crock pot. It could be really, really hands off. You were excited to do it. I mean, maybe not excited, but you were willing to do it.

Avram Gonzales: So easy. Right? Throw everything in the Crock-Pot it’s gonna be done.

Rachel Gonzales: Yep. Absolutely. Super simple. So I give you the recipe You had everything that you needed to be successful and I left for the day.

Avram Gonzales: And that’s where everything just kind of went sideways.

Not long after Rachel left, the baby woke up. And that was the time that I should have been starting in on the recipe. So the baby gets up, and that’s what I’m doing first. So, I’m, I’ve abandoned, cooking. And mind you, I didn’t have a lot of time to work with because it needed to cook for six hours.

So the baby wakes up. We do all these things. Now I have to start feeding him. Solids. He already had his bottle and stuff. And I’m trying to prep and prepare everything that needs to go into the crock pot while feeding him. Cause I gotta make this cut off for the six hours. So that food is ready when Rachel gets home.

Rachel Gonzales: Mind you, Avram is not good at multitasking.

Avram Gonzales: I’m so terrible at multitasking. So, I’m getting a little frazzled here, but I’m like, I’m handling it like a boss and I’m gonna make my timeline. I’m reading down the recipe. I’m chopping things that need to go in throwing them into the Crock-Pot. I’m doing this opening up cans of tomatoes, throwing that in the Crock-Pot like all these different pieces.

Then it says: you need this much black beans, and then you need this much kidney beans and I turn around, it’s already in the sink. Rachel had already soaked it and I’m thinking perfect. She must have pre-measured this cuz that’s who Rachel is like. She wouldn’t gimme these beans, not having pre-measured them.

So I just drained them and I tossed them in the Crock-Pot. It does occur to me in the moment that this seems like an absurd amount of beans, but I’m, but I’m thinking. Of course, this is, this is pre-measured like, whatever it’s going to cook, we’re gonna have a lot of beans. That’s the kind of the point. And so I put it in, and I’m feeling proud because it will be close. done, close to when we wanted it to be done.

Rachel Gonzales: Yes. Okay. So fast forward to the time that I get home. I walk in the house. It smells amazing. I’m really excited about chili beans for dinner, and… Avram checks the beans and they’re still hard.

Avram Gonzales: We’re like 30 minutes out from when it should be done. And the beans are hard.

Rachel Gonzales: And I’m like, What? How is that possible? There should be no hard beans. I mean, that is impossible. How did that happen? So then I go on this, this journey of discovery, and it was really inspired by a core value that we have at Digital Harvest, and that is: “we create together” and you know, what does that mean? That means that if we havean outcome, we have contributed to it somehow, whether we were a part of it by leaving something out or by, doing something that maybe wasn’t most efficient, whatever it is.

Avram Gonzales: We have a participate, we pa rticipate in the outcome.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. So I took that to heart and I, began to think, okay, so where did I go wrong in the handoff? Cuz I knew I was confident in doing that recipe. I knew exactly how I would’ve done it. I had a game plan in my head. But I didn’t have time when I left that day to actually walk you through that entire game plan. Also, I didn’t think I’d need to.

Avram Gonzales: And mind you, when we realized the beans were not gonna be done for dinner there was some upset.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: You weren’t Clearly upset with me. you didn’t say anything or give me any nasty look or anything, but I knew that she was upset.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: And then I was very ashamed of how I could have totally botched this.

Rachel Gonzales: Right. You felt so bad. And so part of the solution too, was like, okay. I mean, if it went wrong, let’s just talk about what went wrong instead of like, blaming each other. How did the system break down? How did the process break down? What was that? So. what we found was. when I left, I had assumed that I had given you perfectly everything that you needed to accomplish that task of making the chili beans.

It had never occurred to me that maybe you were lacking actual knowledge about how to do what we were doing. So the recipe calls for 15 ounces of kidney beans, 15 ounces of black beans, and in my mind, from my background, I had chosen to not buy a can of beans. I had chosen to make beans from scratch and then add them to this recipe. So it was a double cook recipe. So the beans needed to be soaked, cooked, and then put into the crock pot. And upon investigation, I realized that that is not what happened. The day that I had planned out for Avram wasn’t at all the way that it went, because I would’ve put the beans in the instant pot

Avram Gonzales: Right away.

Rachel Gonzales: Right away. That would’ve been the first thing. Like I would’ve finished rinsing them. I would’ve put them in the instant pot. I would’ve had them cooking and I would’ve had more than enough time to go through the next wake cycle with Lincoln, and then go on to the Crock-Pot later on, I would’ve had time to cut everything and no stress. And I know that no stress is really a big key for you to feel successful at stuff. So that was a big thing. I didn’t realize that Avram didn’t know he needed to cook the beans.

Avram Gonzales: Just didn’t occur to me.

Rachel Gonzales: Huge knowledge gap, that I wasn’t aware of.  If I had more time to actually give it to you to hand it off better. I don’t know that I actually would have told you to cook the beans.

Avram Gonzales: Well, because we’ve done things like that before.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: Of course you wouldn’t think to tell me that cuz I had done that before.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: But you are better at multitasking that whole plan that you laid out, you had the plan.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: You would’ve been able to easily execute it. So you had your perspective of that day.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: Which didn’t match what happened. And then the person executing it doesn’t go about it nearly the same way, in the same efficiency that you do.

Rachel Gonzales: Right. Exactly. For so many reasons.

Avram Gonzales: so many things…

Rachel Gonzales: So many reasons that we’re not even going to go into right now, but really I think the point that we want to really highlight here is when you have proficiencies, you have blind spots when handing things off to somebody, and my blind spot was growing up with 10 siblings we made everything from scratch. If we weren’t eating beans we probably weren’t eating. So it was a Second nature thing to me, and I would never have thought to instruct you to do that. we have to learn from experiences and then plan to do better next time.

Avram Gonzales: And be proactive.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: And I think we don’t realize how much time it takes to properly delegate. and hand something off to somebody.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: And the person that is the most responsible for a miscommunication like that is the person that was handing it off.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: It doesn’t really matter what the blind spots are for you. What’s most important is the person that’s receiving it, understanding where they’re at and making sure you do everything to fill those gaps. So what does that actually look like?

In my experience it looks like being repetitive.

Some times you have to share the same thing over and over in different ways for somebody to really get it. I learned that through a lot of my training and development and communications In public speaking. Repetition is king. If you feel like you’re repeating yourself a lot, you may not even be repeating yourself enough. Because it does take people hearing it a lot before they can finally get it.

The second thing means. Making sure that they have access to all the same resources. So like Rachel said, it’s a knowledge gap. A lot of times. In your business, there may be things that you have to set up that are trainings that people can refer to on a consistent basis to make sure that they know what it is that they’re doing.

And finally, I think this is great from this example in particular, is making the process visible. So, in many businesses, there are a number of different people that will touch a particular project that you’re executing, the service that you’re rendering… multiple people are involved. And one of the most powerful things that you can do is sit the team down together and review a process map. And a process map lays out the major parts of executing on any particular project or thing.

When we don’t understand how we fit into that process, with our little part, that’s also where things go wrong. We don’t understand why somebody’s coming to us with the information, at a particular time, or in a particular way. We don’t know why they cut it into a square instead of just leaving it as a rectangle. Whatever example that comes from.

But, those are the things in summary that you can do to be proactive, you can use repetition, you can use things like process maps, And you can use training, a bank of training that you can refer to on a consistent basis. That’s gonna help bring down the amount of miscommunication.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: Anything else you’d like to add about that?

Rachel Gonzales: We have a way that we do things. And other people have a different way, and they sometimes just don’t align even with just the way that we say it.

So I love this example because it really brings full circle. This life cycle of having this idea in my head and transferring it to you, and then the outcome being so completely different.

Avram Gonzales: Crazy. Those beans had to cook overnight, by the way. We did have to change our plans for dinner. We did not have the chili beans, and I could not believe 14 hours later from the start. Just how brown those little sausages were sitting in there, cooking with the beans till they were finally soft.

Anyway, we appreciate you coming and hanging out at us today at the Babies and Business podcast. If you would, make sure to go and subscribe, particularly on iTunes. Leave us a review. Let us know what you’ve thought about the podcast so far. Your reviews are a critical part of us sharing this message and these stories with more entrepreneurial parents that are looking to find their own way. Do us that favor.

Connect with us on social media @babiesandbizpod. We so look forward to hearing from you and we’ll catch you on the next episode.

Rachel Gonzales: Bye for now.