Stop doing your colleagues’ work
Readtime: 4 minutes
Getting involved in your colleagues’ work is, in most instances, a waste of your time.
Why?
Because most things don’t need ‘improving’.
And your ‘improvements’ not only create extra work for you, but also for your colleagues.
We’re told we need to be collaborative.
And that’s true.
But we need to get smarter about how.
My Quality and Responsibility (‘QR’) Matrix will make you smarter.
Let’s dive in.
The Quality and Responsibility Matrix
Most things at work only need to be done to a ‘good’ standard. Good enough really is good enough.
And then there are some things that must be done great.
Most of us spend way more time than we should do on the ‘good’ things, because they’re easier, and not enough time on the ‘great’.
There are actually four categories of things to be done at work:
Our responsibility and need to be great
Our responsibility and need to be good
Not our responsibility and need to be great
Not our responsibility and need to be good
And we can plot these in the QR Matrix:
What this shows is that as your responsibility for something increases, and as the required quality of that task increases, you should spend more time on it. That sounds obvious, but chances are, that's not what you’re doing.
Note that I’ve assumed you’re not spending any time on tasks that don’t even need to be good, as they shouldn’t be done in the first place.
Let’s quickly look at each box, and the amount of time you should spend in each one, so you can save you and your colleagues significant time every week.
Our responsibility and great quality
This is the easiest and quickest to understand.
We want to focus most of our time on those things that are our responsibility and that need to be great.
These are the normally the hardest and most important parts of our job. So, it makes sense to focus here.
2. Our responsibility and good quality
Next, we want to focus on those things that are our responsibility and need to be good.
There will probably be more of these things than those that need to be great – higher quantity, lower quality.
We end up spending most time here, instead of on the things in our responsibility that need to be great. We do this because it’s easier and it gives us a sense of achievement.
Often these things are under our responsibility but someone else on our team is looking after them. We should have a bit of oversight, but largely leave them to it.
So, we need to be careful not to spend too much time here.
3. Their responsibility and great quality
This is where you demonstrate highly effective collaboration, by adding real value.
This should be infrequent.
Only get involved if you see a big issue with something someone is doing. For example, something significant has been left out, or you can see major operational challenges with the implementation, etc.
It’s very important not to tweak around the edges here. Just because you can see that an improvement could be made, doesn't mean it needs to be made.
Help your colleagues out by saving your input for big value adds.
4. Their responsibility and good quality
This final box is where you significantly change the game, by not getting involved at all.
Do not spend any time on these things.
Do not comment on this work. Do not make suggestions. Do not try to improve what they’ve done.
You will save a significant amount of your time, and that of your colleague whose responsibility it is.
Most of the time the thing will be good enough without anyone else getting involved. And, even if it isn’t, because it only needed to be good in the first place, it’s not going to be a major issue if it’s not quite good enough. It can be easily fixed by the person whose responsibility it is.
And play your part here – don’t give your ‘good’ work to others to comment on. Save that for the ‘great’ work.
That’s it!
In summary
Congratulations, you now know how to use the QR matrix to decide what to spend your time on at work:
Remember, spend most of your time on those things under your responsibility that need to be great.
Spend some time on those things that are your responsibility and need to be good.
Some time on your colleagues’ responsibilities that need to be great – but only when you have some big value to add.
And no time on your colleagues’ responsibilities that need to be good. This is a waste of your time and theirs.
On a personal note
I used to give my two cents into lots of things that weren’t directly my responsibility when I was a partner at KPMG.
Because I was senior, and on a major leadership team, lots of things passed my desk.
I felt that I needed to comment on everything. Partly because I thought that was part of my job, and partly because I liked being able to improve things. It made me feel smart (or perhaps even more importantly, smarter than the other person).
When I realised this was not smart at all I spent far less time getting involved in other people’s responsibilities.
I had to force myself to do this at first, as contributing to things that didn’t need my input was so ingrained. I literally had to remind myself to ‘care less’, so that I could save most of my time for the things that had to be great (whether my responsibility or that of others).
It freed up many hours a week, and was one of the most helpful changes I made, both for me and those I worked with.
One quote to get you going
“How you do one thing is how you do everything.”
Do the opposite of this quote. It is a hugely inefficient way to approach work and life. Decide what needs to be great, and what needs to be good, and then act and get others involved accordingly.
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