Mind the Gap: Spotting the Brown Noise (4)
Part 4 of a series of "noisy" posts about information noise in general, and brown noise in particular: what it is, who creates it, how to spot it, and what we can do about it.
The one and only
Right, so let’s cover the last group. This one is the hardest to avoid and probably the most dangerous of them all: the prestige -seeker replicators1. Replicators were around for some time, but this particular subset of prestige-seekers is relatively more recent. It’s the one that bugs me the most because they are in fact the biggest generators (spreaders?) of brown noise. Some brand themselves as “wannabe experts” in a certain domains, others are just trying to “bring you in” to their success. From cooking to sky-diving, to management - you name it and you’ll find them. What they all do is sharing specific and “important” half baked tips about how stuff works in said domains. They usually do it on social media like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or LinkedIn to basically promote themselves as knowledgeable, prestigious, and worthy to be known. They all have a newsletter too, with fancy names like “pebble by pebble”, “the honest slice” or “you know you want it”, and they (strongly) suggest you should subscribe to it if you wanna replicate their success. We have as much need of this type of content as tomatoes need manure, and yet we find it everywhere.
The problem with most of these folks2 is that they are just picking up various bits of info from blogs, videos, books, free articles and other sources, squeeze them into a squared baking dish, and then throw them in their personal “me-idea” oven. What comes out rather quickly is some shinny new piece of undercooked content, which then they proudly offer for free and immediate consumption to as many people they can muster. They can’t be bothered to check the info, nor to add their own contribution to it: time is ticking and new content has to get on display pronto. And - to my constant astonishment, people seem to readily oblige, despite the amount of noise that comes with it.
Anyone popping to your mind while reading this?
If not, let’s take a topic up my alley for a little spin: the topic of delegation. Delegating means giving a task, project, or job to an employee in order to develop her skills and increase the organization’s overall effectiveness. Very simply put, it’s about dividing work into tasks that others can do for everyone’s benefit.
To me, delegation is like dancing: it involves 2 parties, music, the right steps, and a flow. And like with dancing, one starts kinda awkward, but it’s expected they’ll master it eventually.
I choose this topic not arbitrarily, but because it’s really a challenge for managers in general (I know it was for me). According to late London business school professor John Hunt, only 30 percent of managers think they can delegate well, and of those, only a third of them are considered good delegators by their teams. Which means only about 1:10 managers might know how to empower others!
If that’s not enough - and perhaps exactly for that reason, a lot of managers are reticent to delegate in the first place. It could be because they think it’s easier if they do it, or they simply like doing the work, or they don’t like giving up control. Whatever the reasons, avoiding delegation goes against the essential purpose of management, which is to produce results through people.
Delegation is a skill, so it can be learned. Since learning how to delegate and doing it well is something that will benefit many people and organizations, one would expect to find a lot of good quality knowledge about it online. And boy, wouldn’t they be right! Scores and scores of opinions, articles, courses, and webinars are dealing with the topic. It truly feels like every Joe offers some form of advice, and every Susan knows what’s important. Which would be great, if not for all the noise that comes along.
Here’re a couple of absolutely random examples for you which I picked doing a quick search on LinkedIn: the advice in the screenshot below, and this article. Ah, and there’s also this one, from BBC. Reading them you’re inclined to say: “hmm, this is pretty good, I should use this! So nice of them to share it”. And you go ahead and follow what’s been “shared” but the whole thing fails to materialize into success for you. So you naturally wonder why…
It’s not that the advice is not good. The problem is it leaves important things out, making it a perfect candidate for incomplete information. You see, at the core of the matter stand several important and interconnected choices that you need to make when setting up a delegation3. They are the task you give away, the person you pick, and the formal authority, responsibility and accountability you assign to that person in the process. The person should be willing and able to execute the task. They should also be able to learn something from it and advance their own knowledge and skills. In addition, they should know and understand how to use the authority shared with them, and understand what it means to be accountable for the end result.
All examples above fail to even mention some of these choices. They made it more about what you need as a delegator instead of what the person you delegate to actually needs. Neither of them say nothing about assigning authority, responsibility and accountability (although the first one mentions the word “autonomy”). The person at the receiving end of the delegated task absolutely needs the decision-making authority to effectively carry out the new assigned responsibility and be accountable for the outcome. Delegation is not about what you need. It’s about what the other person needs to be able to get you what you want. Sadly, everyone seems to fall short on this. Like the BBC story which ends with: “I’m glad I don’t have to be here at 3 am anymore. Now, if someone doesn’t get the job done, they have to be here at 3 am doing it.” Now, that’s some splendid brown noise (amongst other things)!
These are not isolated cases. I’d venture to say that everyone who generates content is bound to do it at one time or another and not even being aware (I’m absolutely sure I do, too). Even well-known and prolific individuals are adding noise when sharing their insights. Take for instance the “cheat sheet” below on the same topic, created by a knowledgeable and well-respected online author:
First it’s the “Time Value Rule”. If you follow the shared rule and delegate only tasks of lower value, the chances for your staff to develop new skills and progress are slim. It becomes assignation (or allocation), but not delegation.
Second, it’s the failure to outline authority as critical to delegation. The word “authority” is casually mentioned as part of setting expectations, while in fact it’s as important as choosing the right assignment when looking for the person to delegate to. Without it, frankly no damn delegation works. Fail to do this and people will fail 80% of the time. The other 20% when they might succeed, it’s simply due to fortunate circumstances4.
And don’t get me started on missing the accountability bit, too…
[to be continued…]
Disclaimer: There are folks out there who might look they belong to this group, but they are in fact true content creators. While they might imply some look-alike methods, they actually strive to do real research on the subject. Then they might add their own twist and data to the “pot” in order to experiment a new perspective on a “recipe”. The result is something truly useful and sometimes refreshingly new. They are my heroes.
Increasingly often lately, I’ve noticed them teaming up and “recommending” each other’s content.
There’s a whole process which follows after this, but this article is not supposed to be about delegation. Sufficiently said that If you set it up properly, your delegation will be successful.
Do you think the 80/20 break down is actually true or it is just something I threw in as “topping”? Does it feel like perhaps I’ve just “cooked” a little something for you? You might think: “yeah, the 80/20 rule is indeed so popular these days and everyone seems to throw it around like a frisbee… I’m not seeing any evidence of it, so it could be just noise…“. So, maybe it is, right? Or maybe not… But it’s for you alone to decide, innit? And most of the time you will admit to the social desirability bias, and agree with all reactions and comments dully provided by your fellow professionals. The same way so many other people did with the cheat sheet. All 3.1 thousands of them!