Assigning Work to Multiple People? Avoid this Project Management Mistake.

The most common mistake in project management is so common that it's actually become a feature set inside some of the most common task and work management tools that we all use and love. The mistake I'm referring to here, of course, is assigning things to multiple people at the same time in the same way, also known as multiple assignees, which you'll probably find as a touted feature inside many of the task management tools you use. But just because many tools have now built this innovation into their platforms as a feature, it doesn't mean necessarily that you should start assigning things to multiple people and using the feature in that way. To explain why assigning a task to multiple human beings equally is a mistake, let me just go to the whiteboard here and tell you a quick story. So let's take this scenario as an example of multiple assignees. We've got three people in a meeting together. The leader of the meeting looks at the agenda and realizes something is missing. The leader asks the group, hey, could we update this agenda for next week to include, you know, our calendar of events? The team looks at the agenda, looks at the leader, says, you know what? Yeah, we can do that. We'll update the agenda for next week. One week later, one week later, we come back to that same meeting, and the leader looks at the agenda, looks at the team, and says, why has this not changed? I thought we all agreed that we were going to update this. And the group said, yeah, I thought we were going to update this. Of the group, there was a misunderstanding at every front. One person in the group, the leader, thought that one of the team members was going to update the agenda. The second person in the meeting thought that the leader was asking permission as to whether it was okay to change the agenda and that the leader was going to change the agenda. The third person in the meeting thought that they were going to be working together on updating the agenda during the next meeting, since the leader did say, can we all update this? As if we were all going to do it together. This scenario is a perfect example of why multiple assignees are something to be careful about when working with human beings. Humans, as a rule, want to have clarity as to who is doing what and who is responsible for doing and who is responsible for getting things done. In this case, there was joint responsibility amongst all the participants, and every single person left that meeting with a different understanding of who was going to be doing what. Everybody thought they were doing the right thing based on their perspective, but they didn't have that shared understanding that would have happened had the meeting gone a different way. So let's try to redo the same exact scenario while avoiding the use of multiple assignees and really clarifying our expectations before we leave that meeting a few inches later. So here we are again, back at that meeting for a redo. The leader looks at the agenda, realizes something is off. Ask the team, hey, can we update this agenda for next week? Person number two nods and says, yeah, sure we can. Person number three, though, they step in, they say, yes, I would love for us to update this agenda. I think that's a great idea. We who is going to do this? The other person in the meeting says, you know what, I can do this, but I just need to get editing access first from the leader. The leader says, sure, I'll give you editing access. I'll take care of that. You go ahead and update the agenda. We'll have it all ready and back here by next week. And just like that, we've solved the problem of multiple assignees verbally. Rather than having one big old task that was update the agenda, which as it turns out, requires some editing access that the general team didn't even have, we created two tasks. The second time around, we created one task for updating the agenda in the specific way that was discussed. Assign that off to one of these people, and then we have another task assigned to the leader of the group to give editing access to that person who did not have the ability to edit the agenda previously. These two specific tasks each are something that can be done in one sitting. They have one assignee and they've got a due date implied for the next time we meet. This ensures everybody goes into the week knowing what they are expected to do and if they are a decent human, they'll do that thing that they were told to do and they agreed to do. And by the time the next meeting comes, that agenda will be nicely updated and everyone will be copacetic. That is the beauty of singular assignees. We know who is doing what and it's not going to be a finger pointing contest. Now I know what you might be thinking, Layla. If multiple signees are so bad for task management, why do these software companies make this possible? Well, because there are circumstances where having multiple people responsible for something can be great. It's usually not in the realm of task and project management though. It's usually when you start to think a little bit more creatively. For example, if you were to build something like a plants database inside your task management tool, such as what I did up here, you might want to be able to assign multiple people as the gardeners of that plant. If your gardeners all know to check the soil and they have work shifts or whatever, it's not going to be an issue to have multiple people assigned. Another reason why you might want to have multiple assignees is if you have a true 5050 partnership. For example, let's just say we have chores in our household, we like do the dishes, and both me and my spouse are both equally responsible for doing those dishes. If we were really, really good at working together, we could have that task assigned to both people and whoever does it first will just knock that chore out. High likelihood of some conflict over that. But if both people are chasing towards that same goal in some kind of 5050 partnership, multiple assignees might be nice because you have a shared task list. It's a grab bag and people are just going to keep going and going until the bag is empty, assuming everybody as inclined to do the dishes. Beyond organizing things that aren't tasks and having a true 5050 partnership, the only third reason I can think of to have multiple signees is if you're some kind of statist and likes to see, you know, full entropy inside your team by just giving vague assignments and seeing who rises to the challenge. I don't think that's gonna be a common situation though. So the next time you are planning a project and you have something big like design the website and you know there's a lot of parts going into that, rather than just assigning a whole project to a team of people, break it down. Ensure that all of your tasks have a singular assignee and if there is kind of an overall step, have that assigned to your project manager or whoever is responsible for making sure the overall thing is complete. But if you can at all avoid it, please avoid using multiple assignees in your tasks and projects. Give your team a break. Give your team the joy of clear expectations versus murky ones and make sure that you're setting everybody up for success so they know what they're responsible for and how they can succeed at at least in the eyes of your team. For more best practices like this about project management, be sure to check out our information in the description below where we go over some of the courses that we have to teach you different software while incorporating best practices like this that will keep your brain from exploding and your team from hating one another. If you would like to keep learning that with me today, be sure to check out this video next at the end screen here where you can learn more about action items. It ties right into this topic, but it's specifically around how you can better handle meetings to clarify expectations before you wrap up that call. Thanks so much for watching and until next time, enjoy the process.