Stop fitting work around people. Focus on what needs doing first (and keep your team happy).

As you start to scale, the amount of work that needs doing increases and the type of work can start to look different from when you started. Distributing work and keeping everyone focused on the objectives can get harder than it used to be. Here's a practical approach to how to tackle the right work, with the right people, and keeping everyone happy.

Step 1: Identify the needs

Take a step back. What are the actual jobs-to-be-done that need doing to achieve your goals? List everything, big or small. Be objective and avoid the temptation to tweak the needs to fit your current team. 

Step 2: Create an org chart

Once you have the tasks listed out, start putting them into logical boxes and you can give roles placeholder names if that helps. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t fit what you have right now, the aim is to create the ideal team set-up that the business needs. People crave growth and purpose. Break down your needs into roles that provide enough work to feel valued and satisfied. Remember, a mountain of monotonous tasks can kill morale. Make sure you distribute them or rotate them fairly to avoid burnout.

Step 3: Map people to needs, not the other way around

Now you can start to match people to the roles and tasks you have identified. Make sure you consider your team's strengths and weaknesses before assigning tasks. Can someone's existing skills be applied to a specific need? Great! If not, is there a skill gap? 

Step 4: Address gaps

Have a role or task that need to be done, but no one to do it? If you are in a position to hire, that’s great. If you don’t have the budget right now, or you have team members not matched to a role or set of tasks, look into whether training would help fill the gap. New skills are great to add to the team and can give people a chance to specialise or focus their career in a particular direction. In some cases, a strategic ‘ignore for now’ on certain tasks or roles might be okay, but make it a conscious decision and remember to review it again soon. Other options are part-time workers, freelancers or automation.

Benefits:

• Focus: You stay focused on what needs to be done to achieve your business goals

• Engagement: People feel valued by working on meaningful tasks and have the right level of responsibility

• Growth: By addressing skill gaps, you create opportunities for learning and development

• Efficiency: Identifying tasks for automation or outsourcing frees up valuable time

By prioritising needs over people, and then strategically mapping people to those needs, you create a win-win situation: your team is focused, engaged, and equipped with the tools they need to thrive.