When the work did not hold heat, I always looked for the reason afterward.
Around my mid-twenties, I started checking in with my boss more often on work I had been given. I thought the notes were about a gap in knowledge and experience. That gap would not close soon. So I had no quarrel with being reviewed and then fixing the work.
One day I was told, "Are you actually committed to making this work? I don't feel the heat from you, Shohei."
I was in review so someone else could judge whether it would work. The idea that I would decide "this is it" had not occurred to me. I had not meant to slack off. If that was how it looked, I even blamed the work itself.
The next year I was given a team of six. I wanted to use what I had learned the year before. I told the members the background of the work, and why I wanted it done. I expected proposals they had decided were "this is it." Two days later I received a proposal that missed the point.
Was their drive lacking? Was my briefing bad? I tried short check-ins every few hours after the request. Little changed. Then a member said,
"Wait, I thought you would judge whether the measure would produce results, Shohei."
I would stop an obvious bad move. Still, if she herself had decided "this will produce results," I wanted to leave it with her. If it missed, we could think again. That was when I noticed. I had thought I had delegated. But I had not given her a yardstick she could use to judge for herself.
She could not see what I used to decide good from bad. Then it was natural to hand the judgment to me, rather than commit to her own plan. She had not slacked off. She just could not tell. Telling the background and meaning of the work was different from making it possible to judge a plan for yourself.
When I was given work, I did not know what to ask. When I gave work, I did not know what to share. I was always looking for the reason afterward. The cause was there before the work began.
Work you can call "this is it" has a yardstick at the start.