Do you assign work to people or people to work?

people system work Apr 04, 2025

How do you assign the work of your business?

Do you give tasks to your people?

Or give people the tasks?

Such a choice may seem minor.

Is there even a difference between them?

Should you even worry about such a small detail?

Your choice on this one issue will heavily influence your ability to run your team and the results you get.

Let's take a closer look.

The obvious choice is to assign tasks to people.

It makes sense.

We need this done... You do it.

And this needs doing... You do that.

And this other thing... You over there... You do that.

And yes!! It worked.

The things got done.

Amazing.

And it works great as long as someone is there telling the team what to do.

Only a small number of things to do? No worries.

But keep using this method and eventually it overload the "teller"...

They must remember what everyone is doing.

Be able to tell them what to do next.

As the business grows, it becomes a recipe for long hours and an idle team as they wait to be told what to do next.

And a hard ceiling on how much can be done in the business.

Assigning people to tasks is harder.

There has to be a method of structuring the work before it can be assigned to the team.

To remove the "Teller" and use a system instead.

To have a documented order of the work...

Task 1, Task 2, Task 3... To create Result 1 and Result 2.

Then you have a repeatable structure, and the "teller" is no longer the constraint. (or working such long hours)

It seems like such a small decision.

Do I give the work to the people or people to the work?

But as you grow, it makes all the difference.

Both to the hours you work and the profits you make.