EP18 - How Do I Decide Who Does What?

How Leaders Should Decide Who Does What

One question that comes back quite often when you are building a company is: who does what?

It sounds like an operational question. You could put it in a spreadsheet, add a few names, and say it is solved. But I do not think it works like that.

When you build a company, you first need a North Star goal. Not just a nice sentence on a slide, and not something that only sounds good in a board meeting. It should actually guide what needs to happen.

From that goal, you start to see the tasks, processes, and projects around it. Some are strategic. Some are very practical. Some are not very exciting, but they still need to happen. In the end, those things should lead towards the goal or enable it in some way. That is where the work starts.

You need to match the work with the right person

Once you know what needs to happen, you look at the people in the team. Sometimes the person is already there. Sometimes you need to hire that person. But the question remains: Who is the best person for this specific task, process, or project?

It is not simply the person who has time. It is not always the person who did it before. And it is also not automatically the most senior person in the room.

The right person needs to understand the work but also be challenged by it. That part is important. If the task is too easy, people do not grow. If the task is too unclear, people get lost. So there needs to be a certain balance.

You want people to feel trusted, but not left alone without context. You want them to stretch, but not so much that they break or become frustrated. That is not always easy, especially when the company is moving fast, and everything feels urgent. But if you do not think this through properly, you end up with a team where everybody is busy but not always in the right place.

Dividing work is not the same as building a team

Companies treat this as a short-term fix. This person does this. That person does that. Done. For me, that is too flat. Because when you give someone responsibility, you are also shaping how that person grows inside the company. You are saying: this is where you can add value, this is where you can learn, and this is where you can become better. That means leaders need to pay attention to when a task is still useful for someone, and when it starts to hold them back.

Because a task can be very good at first. It can teach someone the business, the customer, the system, or the way decisions are made. But after a while, the same task can become repetitive. And when that happens, you need to be honest about it.

If someone is good, why would you keep them stuck in the same repetitive work forever?

This is where AI can be useful

I think this is where AI, or some form of automation, should come in. It’s not because it is fancy or everybody is talking about it. But because some repetitive tasks should not stay with the same person forever if there is a better way to organize them. The point is not to replace the person. The point is to get that person out of the repetitive task, so they can move into work where they can think, take more responsibility, and grow further.

For me, systems should never make people smaller. They should create space for people to do the work that actually matters. So deciding who does what starts with the North Star goal. Then you look at the work that leads towards that goal. Then you align the best possible person with that work. And when the work becomes too repetitive, you improve the system around it.

It is not a perfect science. You learn by doing, and sometimes you will put the wrong person on the wrong task. Then you adjust. But the basic idea is simple. Do not just hand out work. Build the system around the goal, put the right people in the right place, and do not let good people get stuck in tasks that a better system could solve.

Timecode:

00:00 Assigning Team Roles

00:03 Align Tasks to North Star

00:32 Keep Work Motivating

00:40 Automate Repetitive Tasks

Links:

Uniprisma: https://uniprisma.com/

Meijer & Co.: https://meijerandco.com/

Personal Website: https://www.thijmenmeijer.com/

Transcript:

How do I decide who does what in the team? it's an excellent question When building a company, you have a North Star goal, Basically, I have certain processes and tasks that are leading towards that goal that enable it.And when you are looking at those tasks, at those processes, or projects, whatever you call them, you basically align them with your team members, that are either you need to hire them or when you have them already, you would align the best possible person with that specific task or process.

and this is in the beginning, it needs to be motivating, so the person needs to, understand the task, but also needs to be challenged a bit. and in the end, when a certain task becomes more repetitive, I would highly recommend people to, bring in an AI kind of, form or to automate certain, task, to basically elevate that person as well out of that repetitive task.