~by Haley Lynn Gray~
One of the most common mistakes I see is someone finishing their part of a task and throwing it over the wall — assuming someone is standing on the other side, ready to catch it, and able to work out what to do with whatever landed.
Never leave something for someone else to figure out. It almost never goes well.
It’s burned me more than once
This one has cost me many times, and from both sides.
Whenever I’ve left too much for people to figure out on their own, it has failed — sometimes horrifically. Reporting is a classic example, but it happens with almost anything. A task handed over with loose instructions and good intentions comes back wrong, late, or not at all.
It happens even when I pay experts to handle it. No matter how much someone promises they’ve got it covered, I’ve found I almost always end up wading through the mess and figuring it out myself anyway. One of my most expensive mistakes came from exactly this — handing over responsibility for a company car without the purpose behind it, and never asking how it was going.
Why it keeps happening
We assume bright people will just work it out. They’re smart, after all. But intelligence doesn’t give someone context they were never given. The person on the other side doesn’t know what you know, what you meant, or what “done” looks like.
The handover is where things get lost. Communication between people and teams is genuinely difficult, and every handover is a place for something to fall through a gap.
Nobody wants to admit they’re lost. So the person who inherits a half-explained task often guesses rather than asks. And then they’re unhappy with you when it goes wrong — understandably.
The lesson underneath: understand it before you hand it over
Here’s what I’ve learned the hard way. You can’t successfully hand over something you don’t understand yourself.
Before delegating or hiring out any process — reporting, bookkeeping, marketing, anything — I now make sure I understand it well enough to describe what good looks like, what the steps are, and how I’ll know if it’s working. If I can’t explain it, I can’t hand it over, and I certainly can’t tell whether someone else is doing it well.
That doesn’t mean doing everything yourself. It means doing the thinking first, so the doing can be passed on safely.
How to hand over properly
Whether you’re passing work to a colleague, an employee or a contractor:
- Explain the purpose, not just the task. What is this for? Who uses it? What happens if it’s wrong?
- Lay out what’s done and what isn’t. Every piece you’ve completed, and everything still outstanding.
- Define “finished.” What exactly should the result look like?
- Write it down. A short handover note beats a quick conversation that everyone remembers differently.
- Ask them to explain it back. It takes a minute and catches most misunderstandings on the spot.
- Check early. Look at the first draft, not the finished product, while problems are still cheap to fix.
The short version
“Someone else” won’t just figure it out. And if they do, they’ll resent you for making them.
Take the extra ten minutes to hand things over properly — and make sure you understand what you’re handing over in the first place. It’s the difference between delegation that works and a mess you end up cleaning up yourself.
