More than a few times, either on the phone, forum or in person,
I have heard our users cry out “We want to assign a task to multiple people ! ”
This has always been a point of contention between different leadership styles. I have always taken the line, that it is not a good practice to assign a task to multiple people, knowing that if more than one person is assigned, the chances of it being completed are diminished. I just have to think about when my kids were younger and I asked them to mow the lawn. Days would pass and each one would assume that the other was going to do it, and I frequently found myself, spending a Friday evening explaining to them, that if the yard was not mown before Saturday morning, then they would be spending the weekend inside instead of playing outside with their friends. A poor decision on assigning the task, put me in the postion of having to drop the hammer on them. In retrospect, it would have been much better to make it clear and easily understandable, that one of them specifically was to cut the grass.
Hildebrant International is a Global Leader in Professional Services consulting, and on their website they have ten management principles. Principle number seven is posted below.
Here is a the link to the source http://www.hildebrandt.com/Documents.aspx?Doc_ID=892
7. Do not assign an important task to any group that is co-led.
Co-leadership has multiple possible consequences and all but one of them is bad:
a) The work will be carried out competently,
b) Each co-leader will assume that the other will take responsibility for moving the matter forward and nothing will happen,
c) Both co-leaders will move forward independently creating:
i) A wasteful duplication of effort,
ii) Confusion among subordinates as to who is in charge of the matter,
iii)Maddening multiple subordination of subordinates and coworkers, or
iv) Contradictory instructions to coworkers and subordinates.
If you are serious about an assignment being carried out, assign it to one person, or to the leader of a group, such as a practice group leader, in his or her role as leader. Making assignments to a collectivity (e.g. ad hoc committee, partners meeting, practice group) defuses responsibility. Having delegated a task to an individual, neither disappear nor interfere, but maintain a consistent, light supervisory interest on the level of, “How are things going with such and such?”
Reading that just enforces what I learned years ago and I still subscribe to it today.
But are there exceptions?
As the main architect and developer of Junxure, I have learned a lot of things in the 14 years. One of the things that I hold dear to my heart is the notion that our users are pretty smart people, and it is because of their ideas that Junxure has become a leader in the Financial services software space. As I listened to many of them explain why they wanted to assign a task to multiple individuals, it became clear that what they really wanted is something a bit different. About a month ago, one of our users articulated to me, a scenario that was like a beacon of light shining on the problem.
In their office, they have small teams of people who perform the same tasks for any or all of the advisors. The advisors have gotten used to using Junxure’s Action Templates and Action Sequences, but they were having a problem making them work smoothly. The problem was that certain tasks needed to be assigned to a team of people, because the advisor did not really care who did it, they just needed to be sure that it got done. They tried assigning all the tasks to the supervisor of the team, and then the supervisor would reassign the tasks out to the people on the team as they thought necessary. While this was an improvement, it still had it’s flaws.
As is often the case, someone on the team would not come in one day, and the tasks that were assigned to that person were semi hidden from the view of the rest of the team. While it is true, that with the report dashboard, the could have seen what was assigned and taken it, it required a change of course from their natural work flow. In our discussions, I finally understood what they needed to make the system even more efficient.
Queues
Wikipedia defines a queue as “,An area where a line of people wait. The verb queue means to form a line, and to wait for services. Queue is also the name of this line. “ This is the nature of this problem. There is a line of work that needs to be done, and any of the team members can do it. They just need and easy way to see the pending tasks for the queue and then they can grab one and do it. Efficient and practical.
Rolling up the sleeves and getting to work.
After thinking this thru, I began to work on a solution that will make Junxure even more practical for bigger offices where for efficiencies sake, they employ queues to assign out tasks. The first thing I did was I added a new task area, called “View Queues” From this area, you can easily create a new queue and then, once it is created, you can assign tasks to the queue instead of a person. Team members can easily view the queues, right from the main menu and work on the tasks as the come in from the different areas of the company. Often times, with larger companies, the tasks come in from an office that is not even in the same city, so knowing who the actual person who is going to perform the task is not only not necessary, but also not practical.
The managers of the teams can easily monitor the queues and make sure that people are picking up the tasks in a speedy manner. They also still have the full ability to assign a task to an individual just like before. It really is the best of both worlds. In fact, if you never setup a queue, then Junxure will work exactly how it did in the past, but once you create a queue, you can assign any type of action to the queue instead of a person.
My initial feedback on the queuing system has been great and I think that it will help solve a longstanding issue for many of our users. While I am not really that old, I am getting older and just a bit wiser, proving that you can teach an old dog new tricks.
If you would like to see more information about the new queuing system you can click this link. http://s3.amazonaws.com/Junxurebasics/ActionQueues/default.htm
Let me know how you like the new queueing system.
