You have a project coming due. The task requires multiple skills to get it done and numerous eyes to check the different parts and make sure they fit together. Because you are such a great recruiter of talent you have a collection of Creatives who can tackle any challenge. They are all very talented in their primary skill and they know enough about what others do that they can function very smoothly as a team. With these folks working for you, how could you possibly screw it up?

Well trust me, it’s easy. Just because you have the right people does not mean they have have the right leader.

When you have multiple people on a project you need to be the traffic cop that keeps them from running into each other. With all these talented people you need to make sure they know who is responsible for what so they put their skills to use in the combination that is best for you. Without a proper division of labor, you will never accomplish all that you are capable of achieving.

A friend at a graphic design firm offered a good example. Tasked to create a website for an online retailer, a group of Creatives needed to handle background design, product presentation, textual contact, payment systems, and other artistic and practical matters. A good team was in place, but their boss had an unfortunate tendency to go back and forth with people individually, talking to them not only about their specialty, but about other aspects of the project as well. There had never been an effective “kick off” to the project, so nobody was really sure how they should divide up the work. When the boss talked to someone about some aspect of the project, that person figured it meant they were somehow responsible for it. At various times there were different versions of the site floating around as different people thought they were responsible for different things, and no one knew quite what was expected of them. The end result was a missed deadline, a website that required way too much debugging, and a visual experience that was unlikely to draw in new customers or attract repeat business.

How can you avoid this?

First, have a good start to the project by bringing the group together — whether in person or electronically — and spelling out the desired result of the project and a clear division of labor. Make sure people understand who is responsible for what. Encourage collaboration, but make it clear who is accountable for different aspects of the work. Get your people off to the right start.

Once the work is underway, make sure you stick to those lanes that you set at first. Don’t go running off to Person A to ask about Person B’s work, and don’t be bouncing ideas off Person B that you should be discussing with Person C. Do not confuse your Creatives…they have enough to worry about.

If you find you need to make a change once the project is underway, then by all means do so. But if you do, you need to make that clear to everyone. Otherwise, you may have multiple versions of a product being created, and the final result will not be as good as what you could have done if you had kept everyone on their proper path.

You generally have enough work to go around; if you don’t, you might have too many people working for you. Divide it up, task it out, then let people do what you have told them to do.

You can still screw up the project, but at least it won’t be for this reason.