An urgent piece of work lands on your desk and the client needs it today. You know you should delegate it, but by the time you’ve briefed someone you could have done it yourself.
So you do it yourself, again. How do you find the time to plan and brief properly when the work can’t wait? That’s what this episode is all about.
Urgent work is often means delegation goes out of the window. And every urgent job you keep for yourself takes time away from your clients, your Business Development and your own career progression. Putting the planning and briefing time in place is your job, and it’s what means urgent work can still be handed over.
Your partners are looking for someone who can win work, look after clients and develop a team beneath them. How you delegate when you’re under pressure tells them a lot about whether you’re ready.
I’m Heather Townsend, author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner & Still Have a Life. I’m the leading global expert in what it takes to move from senior fee earner to partner. Here are 5 ways to work with me.
In This Episode You Will Learn:
- How a few minutes of planning shows you which parts of urgent work you can safely hand over
- How to brief properly and check understanding when you’re short of time
- How to stay in control of urgent work by building briefing and check-ins into your diary
- How to widen the pool of people you can delegate to
If you find this episode useful, don’t forget to like it and then subscribe so you don’t miss another episode.
You can also listen to this episode on Substack and on Apple Podcasts
Hello, and welcome!
It’s half nine in the morning. An email from your partner. The client needs it today. By five.
You look at your team. You look at the clock. You think about how long it’ll take to explain what’s needed.
So you decide you have no choice but to do it yourself.
Because when it’s urgent, who has the time to brief someone properly?
Today we’re talking about how to delegate when everything is urgent, and how to build in the time to brief properly when the work is needed today. This is a question that came up on a group call with some early years partners and I’m going to be also using the material in the delegation chapter of Poised for Partnership for this episode..
This is the How to Make Partner podcast with me, Heather Townsend. The author of Poised for Partnership, and co-author of How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life. In this podcast, I will be highlighting some of the great stuff in our Progress To Partner Academy. New episodes are released weekly, so press subscribe so you never miss a new episode.
Right. Let’s talk about delegating you don’t have the time to delegate.
I know what you’re thinking. “By the time I’ve explained it, I could have done it myself.” That feels completely logical. And for this one piece of work, today, you might even be right.
But think about what it costs you over the long term. If you do it yourself today, you’ll do it yourself next time too, because nobody in your team has learnt how to do it. The urgent work keeps landing on your desk, and the time you need for your Business Development, developing your team and your own career gets put back again.
This behaviour will be hurting your career progression. Your partners are looking for someone who can win work, look after clients and develop a team beneath them. Here’s a quote from Poised for partnership: if you can’t learn to delegate effectively, then wave goodbye to any ambitions you ever had about making partner. (I’ve put a link to the book in the shownotes.)
Can you really be seen as partner material if every urgent job has to be done by you and can’t be delegated?
So what do you do when it’s needed today?
The first thing is to plan, even if you only have five minutes. Before you open the document or start drafting, stop and break the work down into smaller tasks. Then go through each one and ask yourself: is this something only I can do, or can I safely delegate it?
Very little of an urgent piece of work needs you from start to finish. There’s usually the judgement call, then for example the tricky drafting, computations, research and the final review. Then you may find that background information needs pulling together, figures updating, cross-references checked and getting it looking pretty. You don’t need to do all of that. Which bits can others do for you?
Often the problem comes when you are doing a one off or bespoke document. The temptation with something that’s never been done before is to say, “No-one else can do this, it’s too unusual.” In this situation, take a step back. Plan it first: the structure, what each section needs to cover, and where the complex stuff is. The stuff that a junior probably can’t do. Once you’ve done that planning, you’ll find there are parts you can delegate, because you’ve turned something only you understood into a set of tasks someone else can pick up.
Then brief properly, even when you’re in a hurry. A good brief covers four things: the outcome you expect, the points along the way where you want them to check in with you, what needs to be done by when, and the bigger picture of how their piece fits into the whole job.
Before they go, check they’ve understood. Don’t ask, “Do you know what you need to do?” Most junior staff are eager to please, and they won’t always admit they don’t know how to do something. Instead ask, “Take me through the first few things you’ll do to get started on this.” You’ll find out in a couple of minutes whether they’ve got it, rather than at four o’clock when it’s too late to fix.
Allow some contingency too, because something always crops up. The less experienced your team member, the more time you need to allow for briefing, checking in and any rework.
By the way, if you struggle with briefing work properly when you’re up against the clock, there’s an on-demand course inside our Progress to Partner Academy called Delegate Like A Pro. I’ll come back to it at the end.
Now here’s where I need to be blunt. The briefing and the check-ins won’t happen unless they’re in your diary.
When you’re firefighting, you plough through whatever is on your desk. The planning gets skipped, the two o’clock check-in gets forgotten, and then at half four you discover the work has gone off in the wrong direction. You’re back to doing it yourself, only now with less time.
So when the urgent work lands, put the briefing and the check-ins in your diary there and then, and in your team member’s diary too. If it’s needed by five, that might be a briefing at ten, a check-in before lunch and another mid-afternoon. Treat them with the same respect you’d give a client meeting.
Beyond the urgent job, have planning time in your diary every day, every week and every month. That’s the time you use to look at what’s coming up, decide what you’ll delegate and to whom, and follow up on what you’ve already handed over.
Whilst this won’t stop urgent work arriving on your desk, it does at least mean you’re in control of it.
The easiest urgent work to delegate is the work that arrives with some warning, and you’ll always find it easier when you have more than one or two people to hand it to.
A lot of work is urgent because a partner or client sat on it and gave it to you at the last minute. The only way to stop that happening is to help your partners and clients give you the information when you need it. Ask what’s coming up. Ask when they’ll have the documents or information. Tell them what you need, and by when, to do a good job for them.
Then there’s your team. If you’ve only got one or two people you trust, everything urgent ends up on their desk or yours. And if a partner wants one of your team on their job, guess whose work gets put to the back of the queue? Yours!
So look beyond your immediate team. Who in another department has transferable skills? Could the non-chargeable members of your team help, for example with booking in client meetings or research? And ask people about their availability before you need them, not on the morning the work hits you.
When everything is urgent, delegating feels like a luxury you can’t afford. Yet the few minutes you spend planning and briefing are what stop the next urgent job landing on your desk alone. They’re also what show your partners you’re developing a team beneath you, which is what they need to see in a future partner.
Now, if you’re thinking, “I understand all of this, but when it’s due at five o’clock I still end up doing it myself”, that’s exactly what our Delegate Like A Pro course is designed for. It gives you the how, when and why of delegating. To make sure that this is part of your daily routine rather than something you only do when the work is quiet.
I’ve popped a link to our Progress To Partner Academy, which contains our Delegate Like A Pro course, directly in the show notes for this episode. Also in the show notes, you’ll find links to my books, Poised for Partnership and How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life, so you can easily find them on Amazon. And as a thank you for listening, there’s also a link for a 10% discount on annual membership for our Progress To Partner Academy using the code PODCAST10.
That’s all for this episode of the How to Make Partner podcast. What’s your action for this week? The next time an urgent piece of work lands on your desk, before you start on it, write down the tasks it breaks into and put a D next to every one that someone else in your team could do.
If you have enjoyed this episode please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or give us a comment on Substack. This helps us get the word out to others who may need this advice too. Remember to hit subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s episode. Thanks for listening!
What Help Is Out There For You?
If you’re thinking, ‘I understand all of this, but when it’s due at five o’clock I still end up doing it myself’, our Progress To Partner Academy can help you.
That’s precisely why we have the on-demand course ‘Delegate Like A Pro’ in the Progress to Partner Academy. It takes you through how to delegate effectively, the traps where delegation usually goes wrong, the mindset shift that makes letting go easier, and a practical framework you can use straight away, all in just 1 to 2 hours.
Links
Poised for Partnership
How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life
Progress To Partner Academy (use code PODCAST10 for 10% off annual membership)
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Books mentioned
Poised for Partnership by Heather Townsend – https://amzn.to/3ETEYk3
How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life by Heather Townsend and Jo Larbie – https://amzn.to/4iLxugM
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