Boundaries - Assigning Tasks

Within the scope of household responsibilities, my husband Ed and I maintain fluctuating job descriptions. Whoever has to leave earliest in the morning makes lunch for both; I generally do laundry and he usually takes out garbage, but when the cat sheds hair on the living room floor, either one of us might whip out the vacuum. For couples in business, there’s a great temptation to view the myriad of tasks associated with running the company in a similar way: whoever has a piece of free time does whatever needs doing. What works beautifully in a home environment, however, can be disastrous in business.

I work with lots of couples in business, and one of the common sources of discontent and resentment is that tasks have never been “officially” assigned to one or the other partner. There are no boundaries. Unlike with household chores (once the dishes are done, they’re done) business tasks are more likely to exist along a continuum. Answering the phone leads to interviewing a prospect leads to completing a lead sheet leads to scheduling an appointment leads to meeting the customer. Getting plans leads to doing a takeoff, leads to generating a materials list, leads to ordering materials, leads to receiving and checking delivered materials, leads to getting a slip for the materials, leads to coding out the items on the slip, leads to entering the coded information into the computer, leads to paying the bill.

Problems occur when there are no clearly agreed-upon boundaries between segments. More often than not, the wife may respond to a phone call but the husband may conduct the initial customer meeting. Where does the hand off occur? Typically it’s the husband who will be generating materials lists, either one could place the order, but the wife is more likely to be entering the information and paying the bill.

Again, who is responsible for what pieces of the whole? It’s too easy for couples to assume that whatever they’ve neglected to do for the business process will be “covered” by the spouse since that’s the way it works in the home. But whereas there’s no real disaster neither partner gets around to dusting the house, a missed task within the business can create a bottleneck that gums up the works. If the husband doesn’t get around to coding the slips and the wife lacks the knowledge to do that, then yard bills won’t get paid on time. Then the blame game starts.

One couple discovered that when the wife put the lead sheet information on the husband’s desk, he would bury it each day with jobsite paperwork. Since he didn’t see the lead sheet, he failed to respond to inquiries in a timely manner. The simple solution? To agree that the wife’s job ended with her completing the form and tacking it to the wall instead of laying it on the desk. If the husband still missed it, her job was done and responsibility was his. So, awkward though it may feel, make out job descriptions and discuss the details of how the hand off should occur. You may find the process of talking things through will help identify trouble spots that can be fixed with similar simple solutions.