FYI, You’re the new TBB
…. obviously in the political correctness world we live in, this is not how you describe it. There’s other nice acronyms such as SPOC (single point of contact), SPA (Single point of accountability)… among others, but what it really means is that you’ll end up being the one blamed if anything goes wrong with the topic you’re responsible for. Or, if things go really wrong, the one to be beaten.
Every manager wants to have some sort of control, and what better to control than to delegate some topics to the people in your team. It’s also a good way to motivate the employees and empower them. Break a big topic in small chunks and then nominate who’ll be responsible for which topic, with a clear (is it always so clear?) deadline and a responsible. It seems a good practice and indeed it is, but… ah there’s always a but. What ends up being missing is clear expectation management. If you delegate something to a person, need to clarify proper expectations: what is the topic about? what is the scope? by when it needs to be done and how it will be reported. There’s always a tracker, a nice little excel tool to include the numbers and make everything look green, but what about being a bit more specific and give more information?
Normally ends up being: “FYI, you’re now the SPOC for this topic, thank you” a week later…. “is it done? why is it not done? Have you updated your status?” Seriously, why does common sense fails so much? In a parallel universe, the boss would have said something like: “you’re now the SPOC for this topic, which means I expect you’ll report the progress of this topic to me on a weekly basis. You are responsible for contacting the relevant people that you need in order to deliver it. This piece of work is expected to be completed in 2 months time, for the next 1 week I expect to have the draft design ready for review.” Is this so hard?
Seriously, the time I spend chasing (oh yeah, I’ve got to say I love this word by now), for information is unbelievable. “You’re asking me to report about this topic, but what exactly do you need and how does this fit in the big puzzle of things”? Then after a couple of calls / emails I get a bit more information out. I can’t say I’m late, because I didn’t got the information I needed in first place, or that I spend too much time trying to get it. I can’t say that, because that, even though if true, is not the political correct thing to say. If I’m late, never-mind, I’m the one to be blamed…
FYI, you're TBB 