Episode #181: RESPECTFULLY PASSING PROJECTS OFF TO ASSOCIATES

Sadly, bad project handoffs are all too common in the corporate world. This “3 Biz Tips in 5 Minutes” broadcast considers a few ways we can respectfully transfer project portfolios to our teammates. Solid preparation, packaging, and communication are the takeaways from this speedy show! Our featured Lost in The Shuffle, Rock and Roll track asks the ultimate question when it comes to passing a good baton!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

All show.

Speaker 2: 0:10

Hello everybody, and welcome to the Simple Biz 360 Podcast. My name's Jeff Mason, and I'm your host. And, uh, we're gonna spend five minutes together talking about something really cool and impactful, and that's really about passing projects off to associates and how to do it respectfully. But first we just couple, couple things just want to cover, um, how, why do we even, you know, get up here every week and talk about stuff like this? Because we've been looking at the experience economy for the last 30 years. And so I've bottled a lot of my observations, thoughts and ideas, things I've read, things I've learned, things I've tried, things that have failed, put'em in a book called Simple Biz 360 Timeless Business Tools. You can get an audio ebook and paperback on Amazon. And, and really, um, you know, it's my passion for understanding how to service customers better. And the experience economy is an economy that argues that in many cases, the how we do business has outweighed the what we do in the business, and it's the way we're making people feel about the transactional process, what we're doing, what we're not doing. So we've got external customers, we've got internal customers, and today I wanna spend some time talking about internal customers. And so, you know, let's say you're on a team and you've now been asked to pass a project off, uh, to a teammate. I, I was involved in one of these recently, and it was an absolute, I just have to say this, it was pathetic because I got so little information that I had to spend all this time backpedaling and trying to figure out what's happened over the last four years, fill in the blanks, send all kinds of emails, put all kinds of things together, and no one could help just sew this up in a nice, neat package up front and help me be more successful. I mean, are we getting our paychecks being, uh, written by the same employer? Correct? So why wouldn't that employer want both of us to have the ability to be as productive as possible for that company? More importantly, if we're customer in a customer facing element, why wouldn't that company writing the check want us to be that much more effective once we get in front of the customer and work with that customer? So this was a very frustrating process, and I just said, you know, I've been watching this for so many years, people do this so inadequately, there's so few that do it really nicely. So I just wanted to highlight three suggestions. I say, Hey, I'm gonna leave you with, think about it. How do you pass a project off to an associate respectfully? Well, here's my three ideas, uh, towards that. Number one, prepare the information in an orderly, understandable fashion. Put it together, uh, the best you can, bundle it together. Number two, bundle it together in a nice, neat package. Now, sometimes you can't do this in one email. So if it's three emails, hey, this is email one of three, this is email two, three, this is email three of three. Why not? Right? It's nice and understandable, but, but put it together and, and, you know, put it it in a way that it's a neat package that somebody can, you know, hit the ground running. Think of a, think of a relay race. You know, um, you're now getting the baton passed to you. You kind of wanna know, you know, what's going on in the race behind you, right? Where is your runner in the, in the pecking order of contestants? And you know what, you know, um, you know, you want to take a nice clean handoff and hit the ground running as fast as you can. Same thing in business. But we, we strip so many, um, you know, project opportunities of having this seamless transition by goofing it up on the pa on the handoff, on the pass off of the baton. That's where we goof it up. So, so number two is that nice, neat package. This'll really help. The recipient won't, they won't have to backpedal and do all that crazy stuff. And number three, just put yourself in their shoes. How would you want this handed off to you? Do you want it splintered and fractured and where you've got a hunt and peck and backpedal and do all that crazy? No, you don't. You want it in a nice, neat way. Well, you know what, have some respect for your associates. Give it to them that way. Have some respect for the person who writes your paycheck and the customers that you're trying to serve. And you'll be, you know, you'll, you'll appreciate it. So where are we gonna leave today? This cool rock and roll little, uh, Diddy, we're gonna leave you with them. We're gonna leave you with a band called Renaissance. Now, as two gentlemen, Keith, Ralph and Joe John McCarty left the Yardbirds in 69 and went and created this kind of really indifferent sounding feeling band called Renaissance. And, um, you know, they've, they've morphed into some different personalities in the band, but, uh, very, very cool eight minute tune, I think it is. Uh, can you understand by Renaissance, uh, from their 1973, uh, ashes or Burning album. So folks, enjoy it and we will see you like always in 168 hours.