Plan the Project You Want to Delegate

September 4, 2021
This is by second blog on delegation skills. It focuses on taking what’s in your head and organizing it into a plan that someone else can follow. 

My colleague Michael is the ultimate entrepreneur. He can see his business opportunities from the 30,000-foot perspective. He can paint a picture in his mind of what ultimate success will look like, and then make it real. He can take a linear perspective of how to get from where he is now to where he wants to go. Even more importantly, he can share the step-by-step of a project plan with either his staff members or his clients. This is a talent that each of us can develop.  

Many of us have developed project plans for our ultimate goals. We might have prepared a business plan to fund our business. However, we are less likely to do a project plan to delegate a project to a staff member or a client. In truth,  

the better we plan a project the better we can delegate the project. 

Do you have a favorite project planning template? As entrepreneurs we may most often do this intuitively. We do it without a template. We do it in our head. So, our significant challenge may be to supply a structure to a staff member to understand what we want them to conduct. This is where a job aid comes in. Below is a basic project planning template. Certainly, there are more comprehensive resources for project planning. I encourage you to start with your favorite, or what works best for your company. 

The following are nine basic questions for project planning. You might use this template in one of three ways: 

  1. You can plan the project yourself and give that plan to your direct report. 
  1. You might collaborate with a direct report to develop a project plan. 
  1. You might train your direct report to use this template to plan the project themselves. 

Here are the nine questions: 

  1. What are the desired objectives, benefits, and costs? 
  1. What is the target completion date? 
  1. What are all discrete steps or phases involved? 
  1. What are the action steps for each phase? 
  1. What are the time frames needed for each step? 
  1. What are the potential contingencies and problems? 
  1. What are the roles and obligations of staff? 
  1. What support or help may be necessary? 
  1. How will you monitor the progress of the team and of individuals? 

As an entrepreneur, you can follow the example of my colleague, Michael. You can customize these questions, or expand them, to suit your needs. The key point is to 

plan your project before you delegate your project. 

QUESTION 

How might you customize these questions to plan the project you want to delegate?  

Chuck Scharenberg is the Founder of More Profit More Freedom, a consultancy that supports the execution of large-scale growth for small businesses. His practice has successfully grown businesses with processes that identify potential roadblocks and mitigation schemes to accelerate realistic execution.

Solving the Right problems by asking the Right questions!