APHIDS

A memory aid for delegation

I recommend APHIDS as a memory aid for delegating small- to medium-sized projects.

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Aim — What are we trying to achieve, and why?

Project — Describe the major steps of the project and roughly what each looks like.

How hard to try — Are we maximising or satisficing? Roughly how much time do you expect it to take? (One useful manoeuvre is: “If you notice you’re on track to spend more than X hours, check in with me.”)

Information — The catch-all for helpful context you haven’t already provided. This might include people they could ask for help, non-obvious constraints they might face, passwords or access they’ll need, or previous examples to compare to.

Deadline — When the project is due, including any sub-deadlines along the way.

Stakeholders — This includes you as their manager, and sometimes others.

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Memory aids are great

Checklists are helpful, and a good memory aid (a ‘mnemonic’) increases how often you actually use one.

I created APHIDS after struggling to find a good mnemonic for delegation. A good mnemonic is a memorable concept rather than an arbitrary string of letters, proceeds in an order that makes sense for tackling the problem, uses words that intuitively prompt each step, and balances brevity with comprehensiveness.

Doctors use mnemonics constantly — SOCRATES for pain assessment, ABCDE for emergency response, SPIKES for delivering bad news, etc. My background is in medicine, and when I was first taught how to delegate it felt almost odd that I wasn’t given a mnemonic to help remember how to do it well.

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How do you remember the memory aid in the first place?

Aphids are small sap sucking insects. When there’s a lot of sap to be sucked, they clone themselves.

Cloning allows aphids to rapidly scale up their sap-sucking activities and ensures perfectly duplicated genetic instructions are passed on.

If you too would like to rapidly scale up your activities with high-fidelity instructions, I suggest that you emulate aphids through using APHIDS.

Fig 1: An aphid giving birth to its clone. Inspiring.

(Or, if you’d prefer to skip the convoluted metaphor, you could write the mnemonic on a sticky note and put it on your monitor for a few months.)

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A template for your text expander

Aim -

Project (i.e. description of what to do) -

How hard to try (hours, vibe, a check-in threshold, etc.) -

Information (examples, people to ask, non-obvious constraints, etc.) -

Deadline -

Stakeholders -