How to Avoid Multitasking in a Partnership – Pick Dave’s Brain

If you’re bad at playing volleyball, does that make you bad at multitasking?

This week’s question comes from Martin in Utah.

Q: My partner and I are multitasking at the partnership level. How can we more effectively manage projects as partners to make sure that we’re always working on the most important thing?

Click to tweet this: SERVE your business partner. SET the proper parameters so you both can SPIKE multitasking. @DaveCrenshaw

Video transcript:

If you’re bad at playing volleyball, does that make you bad at multitasking? I’m Dave Crenshaw and it’s time to Pick Dave’s Brain.

This week’s question comes from Martin in Utah.

Martin:

Hi, Dave. My name is Martin Hulbert. I love your book The Myth of Multitasking. My partner and I are multitasking at the partnership level. Trying to match multiple projects and going from project to project. How can we more effectively manage these projects as partners, to make sure that we’re always working on the most important thing right now, and more effectively using our resources?

I look forward to your answer. Thanks!

Dave:

That’s a great question, Martin.

In a partnership situation, this actually is very common. And I relate it to something that I learned from playing volleyball back in the day. Now, I may not look like it now, but I used to play volleyball a lot. And one thing that I learned was the “hubby-wife” serve. What that means is that when you serve the ball right down the middle, between two players and both players say “You’ve got it!” …and that means no one gets it.

I often see it in a partnership where there are not clearly defined rules. Both partners think the other persons’ going to get it and really nothing gets done.

But really you’re describing the reverse, which also happens where both partners say “I’ve got it!” …and then you’d collide in the middle. What we want to start with is clearly defining the partnership responsibilities. This means sitting down, having a meeting–ninety minutes, two hours, something like that–where all you do is just say, “What do you do? What do I do?” And you put that down in writing.

Then both of you can refer to this document and use it as a guiding principle to make sure that you reduce multitasking. Also, you might want to consider delegating on a project-by-project basis. For instance, if you guys are working on lots of different projects, you can delegate project A to partner A and project B to partner B, and so on.

You can still ask the other partner for help. But the person who has the project assigned to them takes the lead.

Thanks for the great question, Martin!

And if you have a question you’d like to use to pick Dave’s brain, all you need to do is click on the bottom underneath this video. Or simply go to DaveCrenshaw.com/ask.

I look forward to helping you with your question.