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1. Equal burden

Dis­trib­ute the tasks equal­ly among the mem­bers so that every­one car­ries the same bur­den in the shared work.

Advan­tage: The mem­bers may per­ceive it as fair. ​“I have a lot to do, but my col­leagues are car­ry­ing the same load as I am.”

Dis­ad­van­tage: It’s pret­ty blunt and doesn’t take into account each member’s indi­vid­ual sit­u­a­tion, work­load, com­pe­tence, and so on.

2. By strength

Dis­trib­ute the tasks accord­ing to com­pe­tence. The per­son who excels at a task and finds it easy does it.

Advan­tage: Tasks are car­ried out by the most skilled employ­ee, which like­ly means they get done quick­ly and correctly.

Dis­ad­van­tage: The team becomes vul­ner­a­ble in the long run, since dif­fer­ences in com­pe­tence are main­tained (or rein­forced) rather than reduced.

3. By desire to learn

Dis­trib­ute tasks based on the desire to learn some­thing new. The one who wants to get bet­ter at a par­tic­u­lar task does it.

Advan­tage: The team becomes less vul­ner­a­ble in the long run, as more peo­ple are knowl­edge­able and depen­dence on indi­vid­ual employ­ees decreas­es. I also dare to guess that the like­li­hood of the task being thor­ough­ly doc­u­ment­ed (if there is a need for it) increas­es, as the one learn­ing some­thing is prob­a­bly more moti­vat­ed to doc­u­ment (if only for their own sake) than some­one for whom the pro­ce­dure is obvious.

Dis­ad­van­tage: Since the per­son per­form­ing the task is a begin­ner, it may take longer to com­plete, and the qual­i­ty of exe­cu­tion may not be as high as it would be otherwise.

4. Rotat­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for high-pri­or­i­ty tasks

Let employ­ees have rotat­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for the high-pri­or­i­ty tasks in the bunch (if this is a recur­ring sit­u­a­tion). Sup­pose, for exam­ple, that each employ­ee has a ​“high-pri­or­i­ty week” when they are respon­si­ble for both the urgent and impor­tant tasks in the bunch.

Advan­tage: The employ­ee can plan their work over time more eas­i­ly — that is, pre­pare for the fact that dur­ing the high-pri­or­i­ty week, it’s no use aim­ing to get oth­er things done, but instead plan for more focused work — or more meet­ings — dur­ing oth­er weeks than the high-pri­or­i­ty one.

Dis­ad­van­tage: If a high-pri­or­i­ty employ­ee falls ill or needs to take parental leave dur­ing their high-pri­or­i­ty week, it trig­gers a chain reac­tion of unpleas­ant resched­ul­ing con­se­quences for the team.

5. ​“Pair programming”

When I recent­ly lec­tured for the Ladok con­sor­tium (which devel­ops and man­ages the edu­ca­tion­al admin­is­tra­tive sys­tem for 40 Swedish high­er edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions), the par­tic­i­pants con­tributed a fifth option. It’s com­mon for them to pair pro­gram — that is, solve a task togeth­er, side by side.

They find that the qual­i­ty of what they devel­op is then high­er, and they make few­er mis­takes. Two pairs of eyes see more than one.

It’s an expe­ri­ence worth not­ing, even for those with tasks oth­er than pro­gram­ming — and worth test­ing, I think!

Do this

1. Next time you have a bunch of tasks to dis­trib­ute among those you are respon­si­ble for, try one of these five options.
2. Then, eval­u­ate! Did the dis­tri­b­u­tion method suit you and the sit­u­a­tion you are in now? Can some­thing in how you dis­trib­uted the tasks be fine-tuned to work bet­ter next time?
3. Final­ly, decide how you will dis­trib­ute tasks in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions in the future (test and eval­u­ate again and again).

A way that suits you

If you apply a method for dis­trib­ut­ing the tasks among the mem­bers of your team, the dis­tri­b­u­tion becomes delib­er­ate instead of ​“just hap­pen­ing.” You can try dif­fer­ent approach­es and find a form of dis­tri­b­u­tion that suits you right now.

How do you do it?

How do you think about dis­trib­ut­ing tasks among the employ­ees you are respon­si­ble for? What do you take into account? Is there any par­tic­u­lar aspect that main­ly guides you? Please write to me and tell me! I want to hear from you.

(Did you know that you can be per­son­al, and del­e­gate more suc­cess­ful­ly? Read more about a Amer­i­can study on the sub­ject!)