Team leadership | Stanislav Valasek

How to Assign Work So It Actually Gets Done

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A manager’s goal is to get things done and to create an environment where people naturally and reliably achieve the desired results. A big part of that is decided the moment you assign the work.

When is an assigned task done? When it is delivered at the agreed time, quality and scope. And it is the person who assigned the work who confirms it is done. Not the person doing it, and not “I think it’s finished”.

How the assignment goes

I prepare the assignment in advance using the structure below.
I meet the person doing the work, walk them through it and answer questions.
We agree on the deadline.
I explicitly ask for confirmation that the assignment is clear and that they will deliver it.

There are only two valid answers to an assignment:

yes, I will deliver,
no, I can’t do it.

Before the answer there is room to negotiate scope, criteria and resources under which it can be delivered. But at the end there is a clear yes or no. Not “I’ll try”.

The structure of an assignment

Goal – what the result is.

Criteria – a list of criteria by which the person knows, even without me, that they are done.

Resources – a list of everything needed to deliver it, and an agreement on who provides what and when.

Deadline – when it must be done.

Approach and checkpoints – 7 to 12 steps that cover the whole delivery, and when and with what the person should come to each checkpoint.

The criteria matter most. Without them, the only way to find out whether the work is done is to come to you. With them, the person knows on their own – and you get the result you expected.

Example: product profitability analysis

Goal: Profitability analysis of our products.

Criteria:

Includes every product sold at least once in the last year.

For each product: name, sales channel (store, web, app, wholesale), units sold per channel, costs, revenue and profit as a % of the product’s total profit.

Ends with a channel profitability table aggregated across all products.

Each product and channel has a short written comment on significant events that affected sales that year.

The output is an Excel file stored here: link.

Resources:

my time, 1 hour a day,

the document with product costs per channel: link,

the data warehouse table: link,

4 hours in total from the sales rep responsible for each channel,

the list of marketing campaigns supporting sales: link.

Deadline: 15 July, 8:00 AM.

Approach and checkpoints:

Go through the resources and confirm on MS Teams that you have access to everything.

Prepare the analysis for one product and show me the result. We’ll confirm it matches expectations.

Finish the remaining products.

The second checkpoint is the key one: one product as a sample. If there is a misunderstanding, you find out after a few hours of work, not the day before the deadline.

You don’t assign work to everyone the same way

How detailed the assignment is and how often you check in depends on how well the person masters the skill. I use situational leadership:

New person or new responsibility – always starts at the lowest level. The assignment is complete, exactly in the structure above, and every delivery is followed by feedback. That’s how you gradually introduce the expected quality, processes and tools.
Growing experience – you assign in less detail and in bigger chunks. It’s more up to them to ask. You explain how the parts relate and why the work is split the way it is.
Expert – goal, criteria and deadline are enough. The expected quality has already been agreed and proven.

How do you know someone has moved up a level? When they have delivered several fully specified tasks on time, in quality and scope, and they tell you during the assignment that they already know this. Impatience with detailed assignments is the signal. But don’t let their impatience push you – first you need a few successful deliveries behind you. When they move up, say it out loud: I see you’ve grown, you’ve earned my trust, so I’ll assign and communicate differently.

If you skip a level and start with a short assignment right away, you risk hitting unspoken quality criteria that the person will miss because they don’t know about them. The result is frustration on both sides.

When deliveries keep failing

Before you work on the person, check yourself:

Was the assignment in the structure above, or detailed enough for their level?
Did I list enough resources? Is my proposed approach right?
Does the problem repeat in one dimension – time, quality or scope?
Have I checked, in conversation, their motivation to learn and use this skill?

If the mistake was in the onboarding, go back a step and fix it. Name the problem, say that it is your responsibility, but that you can only change it together. Agree on something new – for example a change of responsibility or a different way of working – and agree on when and how you’ll recognise that the change is working.

Invitation to reflect

Take the last task you assigned and rewrite it into goal – criteria – resources – deadline – checkpoints. What was missing from the original?
Go through last week and put each delivered piece of work on one of two piles: 1 – delivered on time, in scope and quality, 2 – everything else. For pile 1, ask: thanks to what? For pile 2: what one thing can I do differently when assigning?
For each person on your team, name the level they are at in their main responsibilities. Are you assigning work accordingly?

This article is based on my upcoming book Management Essentials. See also . Delegation and assigning work is one of the most common topics in my .

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Effort Does Not Count, Results Do

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The first time I heard “Effort does not count, results do”, it really got under my skin. I was strongly relationship-driven and effort meant everything to me. Today I consider it one of the most useful sentences I have received as a manager. It changed how I lead people – and how I answer my own bosses.

Four statements about effort

Effort does not count, results do.
Effort expresses my relationship to the other person.
Effort cannot be seen from the outside.
Effort is the foundation of a result.

This does not mean effort is useless. Without it, there is no result. But effort belongs to the relationship, while the result belongs to the work. You always have two relationships with a colleague at once – a working one and a personal one – and it helps to know which one you are communicating in. Otherwise you risk paying for missing results with relationships.

In business the world is simple: if a company does not deliver value that clients pay for, it goes under. If I have someone on my team who tries harder than anyone but delivers no results, that is my signal to act – not to keep praising the effort.

Spam: words that do not serve the result

Spam is the volume of words and communication that does not help achieve the result.

Imagine asking when the sales report will be ready and getting this:

I’ve already contacted Peter from sales, but I need to check whether I have everything, I need to confirm and add the impact of the marketing campaigns, but Alena is on holiday and…

That is spam. It describes effort, not status. After an answer like this you still don’t know what you needed to know.

The ideal answer I coach my people towards is:

It will be ready on the date we agreed.

Or:

I have a delay on the inputs, but I will still deliver with at most a one-day delay.

An answer like this tells me I am talking to someone who knows what they are doing, has things under control and owns their responsibility. The person who assigned the work needs to hear just one thing: is it within the agreed frame or not? And if not, what are you going to do about it? That answer creates certainty and is part of professional behaviour.

Behind a good answer is ownership

Effort is closely tied to your capacity to own responsibility. When that capacity is low, you tend to answer evasively – listing everything you have done, who is communicating with you and which obstacles you have already overcome.

Being responsible for something I have accepted means I take care of it, develop it and actively repair the consequences of poor care. Responsibility is always accepted voluntarily.

Two things belong to it:

Responsibility and authority must be in balance. If I have less authority than I need, I cannot be fully responsible. And if I am afraid of power – for example because I don’t want people pointing fingers at me – it limits how much responsibility I am willing to carry.
I only take on new responsibilities when I am sure I can fulfil them alongside my existing ones.

What to do as a manager

Treat spam as an invitation to curiosity. When you notice someone drifting into descriptions instead of giving a direct answer, get interested in what is really going on:

Is it because you don’t enjoy this task? What exactly?
What would you need to be different?
Is it a temporary personal situation? If so, what do you need?
Is there a hidden frustration you are afraid to voice?

Check responsibilities. With each direct report, confirm specifically that you share the same view of what they are responsible for, that they accepted it voluntarily and that they have the matching authority. Don’t do the work for them. Ask questions instead: what do they need to deliver, do they have it, can they secure it themselves or do they need to ask someone?

Let people carry the consequences. If someone damages what is in their responsibility, let them repair it. Your job is to help them understand how and why it happened and what needs to be done differently next time.

And finally, a playful invitation that has worked well in my teams:

Let’s stop talking about effort and start describing what we need to achieve the result.

Invitation to reflect

Recall your last three answers to a question about the status of work entrusted to you. Did you describe what you were doing? Or did you confirm everything was fine – and if not, admit it, propose a solution and confirm it with the person who assigned the work?
Take 15 minutes and write down up to seven responsibilities you carry. For each one ask: do I carry it voluntarily, with joy, and do I want to keep carrying it? If not, what do I need to do so that I do?
If you lead a team, look at how your people answer. Who owns their responsibility the most, and who tends to step away from it?

This article is based on my upcoming book Management Essentials. If you want to bring these principles into your team, have a look at .

Ready to take the first step?

The intro call takes 20 minutes, it’s free and there is no obligation.