Why ADHD Brains Hire People And Then Do It Themselves Anyway

Nobody agreed on what done looked like. The handover happened anyway. That is where it fell apart.

This episode is the practical follow-up to Wednesday. Skye and Robbie walk through the specific hiring and handover process they use with ADHD founders, including what they have lost money figuring out so you do not have to.

The hiring side covers why video applications and paid test projects replace interviews, how to write a role description that filters for initiative rather than compliance, and what it looks like when you have found the right person versus when you are about to make an expensive mistake.

The handover side covers the 10-80-10 rule, writing a one-sentence definition of done before anything starts, naming your re-entry triggers upfront, building a decision boundary so the team knows what comes back to you and what does not, and scheduling check-ins so the anxiety has somewhere to go other than a late-night message.

They also cover the two failure modes when none of this is set up: the founder absorbs everything back, or the team stops trying.

What We Cover:

• How to write a role description specific enough to attract the right person and filter out everyone else
• Why paid test projects show you more in two hours than an interview shows you in two rounds
• The 10-80-10 rule and how to use it to stay connected without pulling work back through the middle
• What a definition of done actually looks like in writing, and why naming your re-entry triggers before the project starts changes everything
• How scheduled check-ins replace anxiety-driven re-entry and give the founder's worry somewhere structured to land

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

One of the first things you need to do is just define the role. I would say that people have a tendency to under specify or over-specify. It's both. People can come in and say, I want a rock star who solves all my problems. If you'd want a super charismatic, gonna be able to talk to everybody person, you're probably not also gonna find that that person is great at sitting by themselves and crunching the numbers. Hello everybody, and welcome to today's episode of the ADHD Skills Lab. You're joining us for the episode where we're gonna go into the practical strategies of what to do when you struggle to delegate. And I have started to learn how to delegate after many years, and I think I'm getting better at it because I am joined today by my wonderful co-host and the person who put all of this together, Robert Waterson, and off-screen is our little baby Ember, who has recently learned how to make loud noises. So if you hear that, I do apologize. We are trying our best. Last time we talked about this, we talked about the link, the suspected link between delegation and perfectionism. The idea that when you look at the research, what you find is that for ADHD, perfectionism seems to be something that we do struggle with. And particularly, unfortunately, the negative, uh sort of maladaptive side of perfectionism, so extreme self-criticism, I would almost say.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Yeah, really harsh self-judgment for any shortfall from our expectations, regardless of without the component of the expectations being uh unrealistically high.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Exactly. Yeah. So not wanting to do things because what if they what if they don't work out? And not wanting to delegate because what if that person doesn't do a good job? And then we you know, like so there's a lot of that kind of uh way of thinking that is stopping us from engaging in the process of delegation.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

I do think, by the way, it it is weird to isolate that piece as the just to just go back to that, like to argue against myself. Well, yeah, because unrealistically high standards is a problem, like so. We're not having that thing that is a problem. That part's a problem too. This part, the like harsh self-criticism for shortfall. I'm just trying to think of them in sort in terms of like sort of a spectrum where like the opposite would be not caring about any shortfall. Yeah, like you want something, you want a negative thing here. We're just experiencing it.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Yeah, we're just experiencing experiencing it a lot, and and we will say, because we said this last episode, and we'll say it again this episode. We will say last time we are assuming in this context that the person that you have hired is good at what they do. You know, they are an A player, so there is a lot of space for like you just haven't hired a good person, and we will actually talk about how to do that better in this chat as well. But when we get to the delegation part, we are assuming that they are good at their job.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Yeah, step one, uh, which would like the first piece of advice we're gonna give is finding the right person.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Exactly. Okay, well, let's get into this because we've hired people over the years. One of the jobs that I do, you know, people ask me what I do, especially when I'm working with people in a one-on-one capacity, is we will hire on people's behalf. So that's something that we actually do. So we have a lot of experience with hiring, and over the years we've developed a very specific process for hiring that I think it goes against, you know, I will throw a few stones at recruitment companies. You guys are amazing, but like what is with these interviews? Like, we know good people suck at interviews. Anyway, let's get into it, Robbie. Do you want to start us off?

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Yeah, I'm just thinking that, like, you know, being too organized, that that drifts into sort of an OCD time-wasting behavior.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Yeah, no, you're right, you're right. They should all be negative. It was really unfair of the last paper to say that we did negative versions of perfectionism.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Refuse to take any negativity around ADHD.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

You like fight to the death for everything.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

I'll undermine this argument.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

I have time, I have a podcast.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

I have the motive. Yeah, so I I think the core goal of this is going to make delegation feel safer in terms of this acute pain at this sort of discrepancy between sort of the vision and the output, I guess. Trying to reduce what that perfectionism is reacting to, reduce that gap. And so we're gonna hit three practical directions. One is finding the right person, two is sort of completing the delegation and like actually offloading it, I guess, instead of keeping it in this like half and half space. Three is uh we'll we'll recover some of these sort of reduce the gap strategies that we um covered in the brief gap episode, sort of structured re-engagement, things like that.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

So the first thing that we want to do is we want to figure out how to find the right person and set up the role. So this is gonna be really, really practical because we've done this, like I said, we've done this a ton of different times, and we've learned from we've we've we've lost money doing this, I'll just say that, and we have done things really well now. So it's taken a while to get that process set up.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

You've also helped a lot of your clients to do this, and they've been really satisfied with the results.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Oh, yes, no, they have. I was talking to somebody the other day and they described the person that they brought on as like an absolute rock star, and that was somebody who I was like, you know, has never had systems and never had delegation like this before. So yeah, 100%. One of the first things you need to do is just define the role, because a lot of times it's a tricky one, right? So I would say that people have a tendency to under-specify or over-specify, it's both. Because people can come in and say, I want a rock star who solves all my problems. And it's sort of like dating. I often think about it in a similar way. You know, if you if you want a super charismatic, gonna be able to talk to everybody person, you're probably not also gonna find that that person is great at sitting by themselves and crunching the numbers. Like you we have trade-offs, you know that about the people that you spend time with. They're great at this, but they're not so good at that, you know. And in the same way, the person that you hire is gonna have trade-offs. So we don't want to just assume this person's gonna be amazing and everything. If they were that amazing, they would probably be working for themselves. So we want to take that first of all. But then on the other side, because this isn't not what you talked about, but I I thought about it, you don't want to get too detailed. Like you don't want to be like, and then subsection A of subsection B that you need to do for me is this, especially if you're a smaller founder, like you've got a small business, and to be honest, in the age of AI, we all have a small business, you do want a little bit of flexibility. So you want to have somebody who could jump over and and kind of do something. You don't want to have somebody who's like automated to the highest degree where you're basically explaining their job like they're a widget in a in a line, you know.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

I think what you're saying there is if you're the ADHD founder and you're hiring, if they require you to be able to over-explain or or fully explain, you've already run into your first problem, which is that you are gonna have you're gonna have this brief gap problem where you are not fully articulating every little microprocess in a role.

SPEAKER_02 6:55

In fact, the f the number one thing that we're looking for, we're looking for experience 100%, but we're also looking for initiative. And a lot of the ways that we test and hire people, and I'm just gonna tell you how we do it so you guys can just take that and run with it today, is looking for initiative. So that's what I would say is like you want to be specific. So to give you an example, we recently hired for me, and the role literally, I was looking at it the other day, and it's like a highly responsible, very specific person who can own the pipeline of podcast production. Like, and then it went into details on that, but it was not like feay, like that was it would be too broad to say that. But it also wasn't like a person who can fill out a notion database because I don't know if it's gonna be a notion database, it might be a Trello database or it might be a Monday database, and I want that person to be able to like do some of the work to figure that out, quite frankly.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Yeah, so you're wanting to avoid overly prescribing how the job should be done, you're delegating the role, not the you're not micromanaging the the actual execution.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

Yeah, and that is that that kind of comes back to the idea of jumping back in, right? If you if you get too in the weeds about how they're gonna do their job, you can find yourself jumping back in.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

You're almost filtering for you're filtering for the opposite of what you want. You're filtering for someone who's just going to take those things as givens when they were actually they were actually all question marks. They were all like things that actually like figure out what the best way of doing this is. I'm just sort of trying to give you an idea of what the role is.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

You're handing them the problem, and they should be handing you the solution most of the time. And you know that it's working when the person that you hire starts to take that whole part of the job off your brain. So, like with you, you're the one who comes up with what are we gonna talk about. Like, I give you ideas, I ask, you know, guests what they think we should talk about, but you're the one who goes away and comes up with the with the podcast, you know, outlines and and what we're gonna say, and then I, you know, run off and just talk about random stuff, you know.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

It's good. There are like key points that we have to hit. I'm trying to get that like even easier and easier to just like make sure we've done those things.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

But you're thinking about it. I'm not thinking about it. And so if I was to hire for you your role, it would be like, I need you to take this piece off my plate. This is the piece, this is what I you know, but how you're gonna do it, I'm not 100% sure.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Yeah, we could go in a bunch of different different directions for topics, although the through line should be our target audience finds it interesting.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

So I would say be specific about the problem you want them to solve, but don't be specific about how you want them to solve it. That's more their job than your job.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Yeah, and if they're not comfortable with that level of vagary, then that's probably a good sign that it's not a good fit.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

Yeah, then they might be more comfortable in a larger organization. And if you run a 300-person organization, this advice might not be for you. But we're assuming you're running a small, sort of like under 10 people organization.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Yeah, I was gonna say in terms of accuracy, I'm like big businesses still do exist. No, they do give it an age of AI as an excuse for cutting employees.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

Okay, yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Um, but but if you, yeah, if you look, if you run a 300-person business, then I don't know if this is the this is the advice for you. But maybe, maybe it is. Um, I've definitely seen a lot of people benefit from it. And the idea is then, you know, we go from I can't find the right people to have I described the roles problem in such a way that the right people find me. Because if you do that, you've the right people find you. I mean, we were very specific about what we hired for, and we actually the person who's currently in the role and is doing a great job is somebody who applied for the job because it was a very specific role that really fit with what she'd previously done. So, you know, specificity is very helpful.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

Yeah, it also acts as a filter.

SPEAKER_02 10:57

If your job sounds fun for everybody, it's not a good job application, you know. And if your job is the kind of job where you go, like, oh my god, does somebody actually want to do this? Because I don't want to do this, then it's perfect. We're delegating the stuff that you don't want to do.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Interestingly, I don't think we've run into any AI issues in terms of job applications and things. Are you getting a lot of like spam applications? I mean, sorry, I'm not actually on that side of it.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

So yeah, we're well, we're using um we're using upwork for most of our hiring, so I think that filters it out.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

So there they seem to be handling. Because I've heard that's a problem at the moment.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

Yeah, sometimes the responses are uh they seem very AI. Like it is it is more of a thing.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

You can't stop people from using AI to respond. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

It's a complicated process to figure out what is just a person using AI and what is a person's.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

I do think we're gonna move on to I assume test projects in this section. And I do think more and more creating test projects that filter for AI slop and AI responses is gonna be important.

SPEAKER_02 11:56

So let's break it down. Like practical strategies, what can you do? First thing you want to do is you want to go on a system. We like Upwork, not a sponsor, although hit us up Upwork, and what we do is we'll put out a job ad and we will at the bottom ask for a video. We ask for a video because we want to know if the person has read the whole job ad and wants the job enough to send a video. It's annoying, but on the plus side, we do not ask for interviews almost ever, unless with an exception of if this is a front-facing role, but even then the video will do a really good job of that. So somebody puts a video out explaining who they are, what they why they want the job, we can see them, we can hear them, we can get all the stuff that you're gonna get from a from a um, you know, one of those interviews anyway. And then when when we or the clients that we're representing find people that they like, then we do a paid test project. So it is paid, so you are paying a little bit more upfront than if you just did interviews, but what you get from that is so much more data because one of the things that we found that I've done psychology and HR studies and all this kind of stuff. Interviews are a terrible way to find out if somebody is a good fit for your business.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

You know from experience, you've been a great interviewee and a terrible employee for many a business.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

Okay, I wasn't terrible, but I've definitely interviewed, I've been good in all the jobs that I've done. Thank you very much, Robbie.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Okay, I take that back.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

I've never been, I've never been put on an improvement plan or anything like that. But I've definitely, when I was younger, when I was in my 20s, I would go for jobs, and I knew that if I did the interview, I would get hired. Almost 100%. I think it was a hundred percent because I'm very good at I mean, I'm I'm doing this, you know. I was always like, and how are you feeling? Oh, and how's it going? You know, like I would be like, and what's the job? Oh, that must be tough, you know. And by the time I was finished, they were like, this is amazing. But the truth is, like, was I the best person for the role of like cashier? Probably not. Like, you know, it wasn't my like strength by any means. So, you know, I do feel like terrible, but bored. Yeah, but on the other side, I know you didn't do amazing in the interviews.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Pretty bad at them, although I have had similar situations where I've like put on a completely different persona, turned up, and they're like, What have we done?

SPEAKER_02 14:19

I didn't put on a completely different persona, I just tried to get a job, I just did my best at a thing I'm I have like masked my sort of introversion and put on like a real go-getter, yeah, gotten a position, and then they're just like, Yeah, that wasn't what we thought we were getting.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

I'm like, Yeah, no. They they did, yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, that was the thing. I I eventually quit the job, like they didn't have to fire me. I was like, I just can't, this is so boring. I like I yeah, and they're yes, we were just sort of talking candidly. They're just like, Yeah, this is like what we thought we were getting and what we got was not the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

And but you're in your 20s, you don't know. I mean, they're the ones who are you doing interviews to hire someone, and you're just trying your best, you know, you're just trying to do the best interview you can.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

You've got some out-of-date interview advice from someone, and you're just applying it, you know.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

It's just to speak to our last conversation. My biggest weakness is that I'm a perfectionist and the good kind, not the bad guy. Yeah, and so we don't do interviews because they're actually, in my experience, the person that you hire might not be great at interviews, they might not be personable. You guys might not have a lot in common because actually they're really different from you, and you need that to have somebody who's gonna manage your business and be the operator, which is often what we're hiring for, operators in different capacities. And so what you want instead is you want to do a test project. You want to say, okay, I'm gonna pay you for like an hour or two hours or something like that, and we're gonna give you a task and see how you do at the task, and it needs to be a task you actually need help with. Something, you know, uh around you know, writing a response to a complicated email or setting up a database or or anything that that you actually are gonna need them to do.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

I think even a series of test projects is a thing that we have talked about in the past. So sometimes we do two, like we'll do two. Like slowly ramping it up and then yeah. So I think starting with like a preliminary, maybe like a half hour, one hour, but then eventually like hand them something chunkier. Ideally, something that you actually want done that's like that, you know, has been on the back burner or been planned for a while and you hasn't had hasn't risen to Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

Throughout this process, it's really good to have an in uh have a test project that is something you actually want done. And and we have I have worked with people who've been like, I have no idea for a test project, and then by the end of it, we have a test project. And because we really want to know if they're gonna do well. And the test project is not like part of it's doing the job, but also it's part of it's the communication style. Like sometimes we'll give people a test project and that'll be the end of the conversation. They will, you know, they'll be like, Yeah, I'll get it done by Friday, and then they don't get it done, you know. So now you know.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Especially in the case of virtual assistants and like virtual EAs. Yeah, yeah, that that I'm not scared of the camera, I'll turn up and do the video response first. And then yeah, I'm communicating and clarifying things that need to be clarified, it's really important.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

And sometimes it's just not a good fit, you know. Sometimes people are like, oh no, I work really effectively when I get a detailed email with bullet points of exactly what I need to do. And for a lot of the people that I'm working with, like that's not gonna happen. Like you're getting a whisper flow uh voice dump with a link to a document. Like that's what we're working with. And a lot of times, for me, anyway, when I'm negotiating these kinds of relationships, it's about taking the shame away from both sides. It's okay to not be able to work well with a whisper flow and a dump of information, totally fine. It's also okay to only communicate using whisper flow and a dump of information. That's just different ways of working. There are people who love taking that chaos and turning it into something great, and there are people who can't do that or don't want to do that, and both are absolutely fine. The key is we want to find someone good. Like when I'm working with people and we're hiring them an EA, one of the things I always say is like, I want you to be excited. Like, I want you to be excited about the person that we're hiring. I want you to be like, this is gonna be amazing. If you don't feel that, we'll just keep going until you do. Because when you do find that person and that you do feel excited about them, it's a game changer for your business. And then the brief gap that we talked about before is relevant here too. It's gonna be relevant throughout. Like the best way to talk to your team, you know, your new team member is to say, This is what I'm looking for. Can you give me a sense of how you would do that? So, for example, when we've done this before, if we want them to build out a database, we'll say, Okay, before you do build out a whole database, just give us a sense of like what you think the database is going to look like, what it's gonna include, any context clarifying questions you need, etc. Like you always want to be uh in AI they call it reverse prompting, which is like ask me questions to get a better sense of context before you go and do the thing. And it works well with with your team as well.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Like it doesn't come from programming because you wouldn't prompt a computer to ask you things in that way. But I do wonder if there's an analog for it in in employment like management hiring space.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

So that's a lot of practical stuff about hiring. So hopefully that gives it gives you a bit to go on. Just as a side note, if you're thinking about that and you're like, oh my god, that sounds like a lot of work, we do it for ADHD founders. So you can always just click the link below, book a call, chat with me. Like, that's totally fine. We'll we'll help you out with that. But let's talk about delegating. Like, what actually makes real delegation different from what we would call like fake delegation, or like you're sort of keeping one foot in, one foot out. So there's a term here, there's a there's a process here that I want to highlight because I think it really helps with a lot of founders who are struggling with this. And it's not mine, and I can't I don't know who made it, but it's called the 1080-10 rule, which is basically you give them 10%, then they do 80%, and then you check the final stuff. So as we have this conversation, I will say you can still be the one that presses publish on items, especially when you're in training. You don't have to give people full control. A lot of people think of a project, say write and send an invoice as one job, but actually find the details, get the invoice set up, get it ready to go, and then send it to you, and you just press send. Like that's the tiny part of the job that you're handing over. So when I'm working with people, for example, I'll say, Could you draft the email? So the bit that you do is a tiny part of the job that you're handing over.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Yeah, you're delegating sort of 80% of the job, you're keeping the tiny bits at the start and the finish.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

Exactly. And you know, one of the things that we would add to the 1080-10 rule is it would be more like five, 10, 80. You know what I mean? It's like you give them a little bit, then they give you something to react to, and then you uh say that the thing that they reacted to is what you want, then they go away and do the bulk of it, and then you do a final check before the end. Like that's probably more realistic of the process you want to go through. Basically, you know, one of the biggest problems we have is this idea of the delegation is collapsing back. So people say, Can you do this? Then they say, Yep, I've got this, and then both people are like, right, this is done, but no one really knows what we're doing. So if if I said to it, maybe Robbie, a good reversing is if you said to me, Hey, Sky, can you handle um prepping for the podcast next week? And I went, Yeah, that sounds good. Okay, well, what does that look like? How does that work?

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Yeah. And so I need to be giving you, I think we call it definition of done. I think what What does good look like? But yeah, definition of done, I think, is the titom memetic.

SPEAKER_02 22:05

And and I like the idea of like what would make you worry. So if you said, okay, the definition of done is that you go through and you think about the process and you think about the research papers and you have an outline for every single step and it says like who's doing what and all that kind of thing. And then the thing that would make me want to like go back and double check it would be if you if you don't have the research papers by Thursday, you know, that kind of thing is probably helpful.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Yeah, yeah, it's a good example.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

And then yeah, the other thing is like being very clear about what they own.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

I would probably say, like, yeah, re-entry would be if I don't have verbatim quotes to back up key findings in the outline um from the papers.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

100%, yeah. And then in terms of the decision making, then it would be okay, who's deciding what? So if if you say to me, can you handle the podcast next week in the outline? It'd be like, okay, cool, but like, am I deciding the topic? Are you deciding the topic? Who's deciding the papers? Do you want me to check in with you on the papers? You know, that kind of thing. Direct decisions come back to the founder at a checkpoint.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Making the handover explicit. So what does good look like? What would make you re-enter? And what is yours to decide? What is theirs?

SPEAKER_02 23:20

Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And making that really clear because otherwise we will come back in. And I think it's it's probably good. If you're gonna do this consistently, it's probably a good idea to have some kind of template. It doesn't necessarily have to be in a dock somewhere, but something that the team knows. Like, okay, when I get given a task, I need to ask, what is the definition of done?

SPEAKER_00 23:44

Brief templates at handover.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Exactly. Okay, you're on it. You're on it. Okay, cool. Well, before we get to all those two those things, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

We can though, we can we can couple those three points, which is what does good look like? Like one concrete sentence, not a feeling, not a vibe, not a like, you know, it can't, it needs to be concrete.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

And if it's a feeling, then it has to be a feeling based on the example. So if you're like, well, it has to be a feeling because I'm doing a design handover, for example, then we need to have a mood board, you know, like everything has an example.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

But yeah, if you can't write it and they can't deliver it. And then yeah, I think we've already covered naming the specific examples where you're gonna re-enter if something goes wrong. And yeah, in terms of execution decisions, any of the decisions that aren't for them to make need to be brought back to you at the checkpoints. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Okay, so let's talk about some of the tools then.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

And then we do have scheduled check-ins as like a workaround for sort of the anxiety that that like I turned up at Friday night at the hall and had a panic about when when everyone had gone home for work, that would have been a good time for blew up their phones, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, 24 to 48 hours after the handover, the team sort of reflects back.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

It's also just as an aside, this is gonna sound really strange if you've never been the owner, but when you have a business that you've built and you delegate a part of it that's been a big part of your life to somebody else, and then you just have crickets for like a week, it's very stressful. It's like it's like sending your kid off to school. You want to get updates, like tell us how it's going. We want to know. Like, there is a little bit of that as well.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Yeah, it's important to me that this is going right. Yeah. And there's also this gap and this this, yeah, it's hard for me to let go of thinking about this every week.

SPEAKER_02 25:27

Exactly. And honestly, even if it's going well, just like be like, it's going well. Like, just want to know. Like, it it's a bit of an emotional process of business. I think that's the key as well that people forget sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

Yeah, and I think um schedule check-ins is a little bit of a repeat from the briefcap, but that's okay, that's what we're doing. Um, so yeah, like 40, 24 to 48 hours after handover, sort of reflecting back their understanding of what that brief like here's what we think you meant. Like, are we right? This is like a at a phase where it's very cheap to correct those like errors, and you're giving them something to react to, which was a big theme of the briefcap video. Checking number two, sort of the midpoints, again, giving the founders something concrete to react to, checking it at the midpoints where the work is still somewhat malleable. Yeah, sort of trying to activate that like reactive clarity rather than just leaving them with the anxiety of like, I hope it's going well.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

It kind of all comes back to that reactive clarity, I think. That's probably one of the most useful to me when I think about how I use it with my clients. It's been one of the most useful things we've talked about in the last month or two.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Yeah, and the idea is that these scheduled check-ins are sort of the it's not the anxiety I guess is gonna go away necessarily, but at least you can go like, oh, well, I don't you can have that feeling and then go, yeah, but we're gonna we're gonna talk about it in four days. So I don't need to rush off and do something now, start messaging, interject myself, go check on things, how how things are going.

SPEAKER_02 26:43

Yeah, like maybe for that person in the example we talked about with the with the event happening on a Wednesday and kind of panicking on a Friday, it might have been a good idea to have a a f uh like an end-of-week check-in on the event, just to be like, how's it going? Do we have everything we need? What does the venue look like? Like that would be something I would recommend going forward. It's like the weekend.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Get that founder through the weekend.

SPEAKER_02 27:06

Yeah, because maybe the weekend is always gonna be like one of those times where you can't help yourself, you're gonna think about it.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Supposed to be taking a break.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

Yeah, and but but it's like the weekend before a big event is probably gonna be stressful. So, you know, that could help take some of the pressure off it.

SPEAKER_00 27:21

Yeah, I can also imagine it's one of those times where everyone has gone home and the founder is sort of still cuttering around. No one's here doing it. I need to step in now all of a sudden, yeah, feeling to start taking over start to take over.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

It's it's an emotional thing, and I mean that's what we talked about in the last episode about the perfectionism. It's that idea of like, what if it goes wrong? That'll be my fault, and the self-criticism that comes from that. Like uh founders are just people who are trying to do a thing that's kind of crazy and a little bit scary.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

I think statistically they've probably had at least one business fail. Uh I actually don't know the stats on that, but I know it is sort of a trope of entrepreneurship, is that you don't succeed on your first business, which makes starting your first business kind of a crazy move.

SPEAKER_02 28:04

But yeah, well, you do it because it's the it's the right generally speaking, people start a business because it's the right environment fit for them. And so it's not necessarily without its emotional side as well. Brief gap tools, let's talk about them. So these are basically the tools that you can use to help you reduce the gap between the vision and and the action.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

We we talked about in a previous episode how the founder, it's like a it's particularly like an ADHD struggle to fully articulate a vision. The main takeaway was that the transfer, that initial brief and transfer is always going to be incomplete. It's not gonna be fully fleshed out. Just making that brief session longer is not the way to solve that. Yeah, one of the solutions was giving them something to react to. And so that's sort of like prototypes. There's lots of sort of industry examples of that. But one of the one of the first things is the brief template at handover. So actually having a template to structure the input from the founder about what's so like the goals, the must-haves, like what's the definition of done, the must-not haves, what's going to, what's going to be triggers that pull me back in, concrete references. Like here's three concrete examples of kind of what I'm looking for. Yeah. It's not to it's not to you're not attempting to produce a complete spec, like spec sheet, but you're trying to sort of transfer as much of the vision as possible. You know, transferring a complete vision is a weakness, and so structuring it so that you're hitting all these sort of key points that they're gonna need to know to not immediately have that frustration of that gap between what they're delivering or what they're starting or the direction they've started going in and what you had in mind.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

Yeah, 100%, 100%. And that comes down to the like show me, don't ask me when you have questions, when you're doing things with the founder, giving them something to react to. So there's that idea of like, these are the three ideas, this is the one I like, give them context. Part of handing things off is gonna be not expecting them to have the context across from everything anymore. So don't get a job that you wanted them to delegate to you, the you know, you the person who's working for the founder, and then be surprised when you ask them a question about it and they don't have context. So you're gonna have to you're gonna have to start to know more about this than they do, basically.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

Yeah, it's sort of that open-ended generation is where the like ADHD communication um of that vision was was breaking down and failing. Yeah, and so giving them concrete things to react to, prototypes, drafts.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

Yeah, mood boards, like there's always something. There's always going to be something that you can give someone to react to. Reports, especially in the age of AI now, you can you can mock up something way faster than you used to. Like, do that and have it be wrong. That's still something to react to.

SPEAKER_00 30:58

And the great thing about that speed is like getting that reaction early on is what's important here. So, yeah, giving them something to react to in the first 48 hours. Yeah, we think this is what you meant, and then they're gonna be able to sort of react with that sort of clarity of yeah, we had this concept of clarity through seeing. So um, I I think it's sort of related to do you think it's related to hindsight bias? I think just something I was reading from the pre-mortem conversation that we're going to have do an episode on. It is sort of tapping into that like sort of hindsight bias of you you know at the end of it, you know, like, and so you're sort of trying to tap into that rather than staying in the brief phase, you're trying to give him concrete things to react to, and then be like, oh no, no, not that. Like, it's it's much easier to react to something.

SPEAKER_02 31:41

Yeah, and it's it's tricky.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Much easier to point out the faults or the differences that you want in something concrete than it is to think of every little detail that could be taken in a different direction. Like you've got one thing in your mind, you're not thinking of how every piece of that could be done a different way, in and not what you're thinking.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

Exactly. And to be completely honest with you, if you are a if you're a founder and you're going, that's cool, but how do I how do I get my team to do this? You have to tell them to do this. Like just a frank conversation. Make this just a core part of what the business runs on.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

I don't know if it has to be a frank conversation. I don't think it's a particularly confronting thing.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

It's it's like Well, I think you have you have to draw a line in the sand. You have to kind of say, like, this is what I want from now on.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

I think that probably there's frustration going both ways, right? There's frustration that the deliverable isn't matching what was in your head. There's also frustration from the team that they've delivered something which matched what you said, and they're confused why the founder's coming back in, reinserting themselves, and changing things up from under them. The way I would have this conversation is is sort of I you I think if you identify that you're like, look, I'm having trouble articulating what I want. This is the best way for us to make sure that we're aligned and that we're on the same page. That's not there's no fault being laid there.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

No, and and I and I don't I when I say frank conversation, I don't mean that there's a fault or anything like that, but you just have to be very clear and explicit that you want this. Like, don't expect them to read your mind. You know, don't be like, I'd like more feedback, and then think that that's you explaining it.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

So you can also send them this podcast, actually. If it's too confusing, just send them this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Yeah, again, I think actually send them the brief gap podcast where we go into full detail about how to create this sort of rigid structured series of check-ins and different ways of giving them something to react to that's gonna really help close that brief gap, which is which is the yeah, the last piece of the where is this frustration, where is this sort of gap occurring between the deliverable and what they had in mind and and what's causing this sort of ADHD perfectionism, sort of acute self-criticism.

unknown 33:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:53

So the one thing that uh I do want us to r discuss is it's good to have a document. So if you're working on a project and feel free to set up a Slack channel or something specifically for a project, but if you're working on a project, it's good to know which decision belongs to which team. Who owns that decision is something that I would recommend. What happens if you don't do this? I love that we always end with instead of on a hotel note, we're like, and this is why you should do it.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

If you don't, bad things will happen to you.

SPEAKER_02 34:25

Okay, so these are the failure modes if this isn't happening. And if this sounds like you, then chances are this is not happening. So, number one, the founder absorbs everything back. The hire didn't work out, the team is good, but nothing fully leaves, they're working super longer hours. Sometimes the worst one that I see that really like is just is when the founder hires a team and then just takes care of them and they get paid, and the founder still does all the work. So you're paying for the operating costs of having a team, but you're not actually getting anything off your plate in any real positive way. This is very, very frustrating and and very expensive. The second option is the team stops trying, so they've learned it doesn't matter, they're still gonna be wrong, this isn't gonna work.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

I suppose an example of that as well is like your CEO just manages you, yeah, but you're still the one doing all the work, which I mean obviously there'll be certain things like where you're the talent or where you aren't super replaceable in that role, but ideally they are actually taking things off your plate.

SPEAKER_02 35:30

Yeah, yeah. Ideally, the the team is taking things off the CEO's plate.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

Yeah, I was thinking in terms of like a single COO hire, for instance, if like the first thing you do is sort of I I guess it's tricky, a COO should really have a team under them to delegate down to.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

Yeah, I I I tend to go hire an EEA, then you hire a COO. That's kind of like the order that I would go in personally with that kind of not usually it's like okay, hire an EA, then hire someone to help with delivery, then hire a COO, like we're sort of like I guess I'm guessing you sort of hire for a series of delegatable roles, and then eventually you need a COO to manage it all so that you can step back from all of that. Yeah, sometimes you need a COO earlier, but it really depends on whether your CEO is also your chief revenue officer or other things. Like if it's if it's like a CFO chief revenue officer hybrid role, then maybe it's early. But sometimes people will hire a CEO and they just needed a good EA. So they learn if the team thinks the decisions are gonna get reversed, the ownership isn't real, the founder will come back anyway, they're gonna stop trying.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

The example I'm thinking of where the COO was giving all the work, they were just sort of managing the CO CEO, but like they were still the one doing all the work. I guess that's probably the downside of hiring a COO and having no one for them to delegate to. Is like they're really good, like they've probably got prior work experience at taking like project managing, making sure everything's getting done, making sure the right people are doing the right job. If they're the only person in the business with you, they're just gonna throw it all right back at you and work you like a dog.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

I will say though, very experienced business owners will buy a business, not even start their own business, install a CEO in that business, and have that CEO then hire all of those people. So if you like, so there's nothing wrong with hiring a COO. Like you can hire a COO and then they can hire a COO. Yeah, so you can hire a COO and then they can hire all the people under them if you have the funding. It's more if you don't have the funding, but you're sort of just looking for a superhero, like sometimes that can be tricky because they are quite expensive.

SPEAKER_00 37:38

And they're not supposed to be a one-man team. I don't think so. I don't think so. Or maybe I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 37:43

I guess operating off that indicates there's a team underneath.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

Yeah, yeah. I guess if they are like a transitional one, they might be good at handling everything and delegating off as quickly as possible.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

So yeah, the team stops trying is the other one, and then both are right, both are frustrated. Like it's not a it's not a personal personality problem with either member of the team. It's just that they're responding in a way that doesn't fit with the structure of what they're trying to get to. So they, you know, what we want to do is we want to reduce the gap between what you're looking for and what you hire for. You want to make it easier for you to see what they're doing, get a sense of it, but also hand things over and on the other side, have the person that you're hiring have a complete understanding of okay, what does it look like for me to actually take a task off their hands? When is this gonna be done? And in terms of when I say get a complete sense of, you know, tell them to help you make documents to get that sense. Like, try not to say, I'll just write a document about this, because we both know you're not gonna do that. If you could do that, we wouldn't be having this conversation, so don't do that. I have done that, don't do that. So, yeah, before for founders, you know, before the next hire, define the output. What is the problem you're taking off their hands? If you want very specific information about hiring, we've already talked about that. And then for the team, stop letting the founder just come back in and take over. If you are feeling yourself, you know, you don't even care anymore, who even cares? It's not gonna happen. Try and build a little bit more systemization around when they're gonna come back in, what that looks like, why are they coming back in? Try and get a sense of it, even when you're like, eh, I notice that you like we're checking that. Like, is everything good? What do we want? You know, and understand that the business is their baby, and sometimes they're just here because they want to see their baby grow up, you know. Send them little updates, they're doing fine, you know, like story part. Yeah, a little story when we send our kids off, you know, for a little bit, sometimes we'll get a story back. They went on a slide, you know. Here's a picture. Like just remember that you you are dealing with somebody's there's something that they've built by hand, if you know what I mean. Robbie has a ton of really exciting stuff coming up for you guys afterwards, including a little look through the history of the DSM, and we'll also be talking about other founder struggles. But if you guys have anything you want us to talk about, please email us. We love hearing from you. We love hearing about your businesses and how things are going. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the ADHD Skills Lab. If you liked it, leave us a five star review. It helps other people learn more about us. And thank you so much to our wonderful team for making us sound good, look good, couldn't do it without you.