Ready to delegate tedious tasks to a contractor?
If you start outsourcing tasks and don’t have a project management tool yet, it’s time to get one. My favorite tool is Asana as it comes with all the necessary features a project management app should provide, integrates with a ton of other apps and is free.
It helps you plan projects, organize tasks and manage deadlines and team members. It’s features support a better flow of communication and help everyone to complete their tasks on time.
Now, let’s take a look at how easy it can be to delegate with Asana.
ARE YOU ASSIGNING A TASK OR A PROJECT?
Before you jump right into assigning a task to a team member, ask yourself this question: Am I assigning a task or a project? Visionary business owners often have a quickstarter tendency, compressing time with shortcuts and instant solutions, which can create problems later down the road.
Let’s say you come up with the idea that you want to optimize your blog posts for higher conversions, so you ask your content manager to change the position of the CTA’s. Suddenly you realize that you not only want to change the position of the CTA’s but you want to update the CTA’s so that they align, and you also want to increase readability by increasing the size of headlines and breaking the text down into more paragraphs. What originally started off with a one-off tasks suddenly becomes a much bigger project that may even involve multiple team members.
Being aware of whether you’re assigning a one-off task or a whole project from the beginning makes delegating work much easier as you’ll be able to see the big picture first, then break it down into tasks.
HAVE A DEDICATED ASANA PROJECT WHERE TASKS LIVE
Instead of using individual project boards for each process in your business, I suggest creating dedicated department project boards within Asana and inviting your team members or contractors accordingly. This way, it’s easy for each team member to know where they have to go in order to check their tasks and it’s also way easier for you or your Online Business Manager to track progress of tasks. An example for your team based project boards could be: Content Team, Platform Team and Copy Team.
BE SPECIFIC WITH YOUR TASK TITLE
When you create a new task, make sure that the task title is specific. Don’t just title the card with “Send newsletter” but use a more concise description such as “Send October newsletter to whole list” instead. This is important as you’re providing relevant context if someone is glancing over their task list.
GIVE DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS
Make sure to add detailed instructions for how to complete the task in the description field of an Asana task. You can also use formatting options and even add links to your description. This way, you avoid a lot of back and forth communication.
Asana also has a powerful commenting feature so if your team members have further questions, they can comment on the task and all of your responses will be kept in one organized location.
PROVIDE RELEVANT LINKS & SOPs
Link to any assets the team member might need (i.e. graphics in a Google Drive folder, copy in a Google Doc or a link to a website) as well as detailed SOPs in the description box or add them as attachments.
SET A DUE DATE
Never assign a task without a due date as it simply won’t get done. The whole idea of a project management tool is to ensure that tasks are completed on time, so make sure that you either set a due date or a date range for the completion of the task.
HAVE A FOLLOW-UP PROCESS WHEN A TASK IS COMPLETED
Have a clear process in place for what happens when a task is completed. Does the task need to be reviewed by you or your Online Business Manager? Is another task dependent on the completion of this task?
Set clear instructions what a team member has to do after it completed the task. This could either be to reassign it back to you for review or to notify another team member that the task has been completed and they can start the task that is next in line.
