Ep. 30 A method to teach your OFS (online Filipino specialist) something new

Hello and welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing Podcast, the podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing your work. My name is John Jonas and this is episode 30, a new method. Not really new, but a method to teach your ofs how to do something new. So teaching people new things is interesting. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. A while back, I sent a newsletter about my son and him doing a pretty good job of following instructions, given the instructions that I gave him. I asked him to spread toilet paper throughout the house. We got a shipment of toilet paper and I asked him to put it in the bathrooms throughout the house. And he put the toilet paper in all the bathrooms. And then he took the rest of it and put it in my closet and filled a cupboard in my closet full of toilet paper where towels are supposed to go so that there was no room for towels, there was no room for anything else. He put toilet paper all over the place. And he did a really good job given the instructions that I gave him because I didn't tell him what to do with the extras. But yesterday there was a major failure when instructions were pretty dang clear. I asked him to pick up his stuff in the kitchen, and three different times I asked him to pick up his stuff, and three different times he didn't do it every time. He just migrated back to the television. So I took his stuff specifically, it was for book, and put it where he couldn't get it. I put it up really high where he couldn't get it back until I was ready. Until he had not completely disregarded what I told him. This time it was not my poor instructions causing the problem. So when I said this, I got an email back from Giuseppe, who has a really cool method for how he handles teaching someone to do something new. Here's the email that he says. Years ago, I developed a method with my interns. I had over 40 interns work for me in my career that has served me well. He says when having them do something new, I have them follow a 1, 2, 4, 8 pattern. After training, I have them do the work for one hour and then review the work. Then I have them work for two more hours and do a review of the work. Then four hours and review, and then eight hours and a review. The thing I learned along the way of my career is that details would always be missing from the training, and it wouldn't be until they do the work that I see what's missing. So each time we sit down to review the work, I find that I give fewer and fewer corrections so I can have them go longer between each review. When we start a new project, we first schedule the review sessions so that we don't allow too much time to go by between work and review sessions. And that's the end of gzappy's email. So I, I. Gosh, I have never thought about doing this. I've done similar things, but not exactly like this. I love it. 1, 2, 4, 8. With a review in between each one. So one of the things that I have done is give instructions and ask them to summarize what they're supposed to do when when they do the work. Summarizing it isn't exactly doing it, which is his way is probably better. Do the work and then let's review it after you've done it like once and then let's review it after you've done it three times and let's review after you've done it 10, 10 times and see is there a way we can make this better? Or what am I leaving out? Or I love it. Try having a review with your OFS the next time you teach them to do something and try that review early on and then try it again. This is typically what I say by give feedback because you need to give feedback when people do stuff. But I love that Giuseppe schedules it in, so there's not a lot of time of them just doing nothing or wasting it when you left out instructions because you think your instructions are super clear and they're actually not that clear.