Thoughts on Hiring And Delegation. The Caliber Ratio

I recently had this realization about delegation, and came up with this framework.?

Manual labor operates in the principle of "Addition", while cognitive?and professional tasks work in "multiplication"

Hold on, don't give up on me yet. Let me explain.

It's no secret that the caliber of the team speaks volumes about the quality of the leader. One can fairly evaluate leaders by the caliber and quality of the team they are able to?assemble.?

But why do some teams?significantly outperform others? And?why do some leaders find themselves?increasingly overwhelmed as their team grows??

Rather than freeing up time to focus on more strategic tasks, a lower-caliber hire may burden the hiring leader with constant supervision and corrections.

The question then arises: Why do leaders repeatedly fall into this trap?

When a leader hires someone, the caliber of the hire should be measured?in relativity to the caliber of the hiring leader.

Let's refer to this as the Caliber?Ratio, whereas?a Caliber Ratio of 1 signifies equal caliber between the hire and the hiring leader.?

Now let's take two scenarios;?

• Scenario 1: You start a furniture?moving business, and you hire three people to help you in the moving with the following Caliber Ratios 1, 1, and 0.5. Although the third hire may not match the caliber of the rest, it is better than nothing nevertheless. Instead of only you (1), you are now 1+1+1+0.5= 3.5 total capacity of the team. Surely an improvement over a solo effort.?
• Scenario 2: You are a solo data analyst hiring three people with Caliber Ratios of 1, 1, and 0.5. Soon, it becomes apparent that having no additional help might have been better, as the total team capacity now is 1 x 1 x 1 x 0.5 = 0.5. This results in increased workload instead of strategic time delegation. You just doubled your work. At this point, you would likely be convincing?yourself with a false sense of busyness due to team growth.

Delegation in cognitive and professional work can only be valuable when hiring someone of a higher Caliber Ratio from you.

Consider the data analysis example again. Team A hires three individuals with Caliber Ratios of 1.2, 1.5, and 2, resulting in a total team caliber of 1 x 1.2 x 1.5 x 2 = 3.6.

On the other hand, Team B hires three individuals with Caliber Ratios of 2, 2, and 2.5, yielding a total team caliber of 1 x 2 x 2 x 2.5 = 10.

A small increase in the Caliber Ratio significantly impacts the overall team caliber, making some teams superior.

But why do leaders keep falling for this trap and hire people who only add more work and burden? My speculative theory is that the human brain is historically accustomed to manual labor, where every extra hand matters. For thousands?of years, we built?civilizations through manual work. Hence, struggles to adapt to professional work dynamics.?

Now that the proposition of the framework is established, it's fair to admit the following;

1. The spectrum of work varies from manual to cognitive tasks, often a mix of addition and multiplication. Take accounting, for example, it's cognitive?and professional work, but some aspects of accounting like bookkeeping are semi-manual. This is what makes leaders falsely bear with a hire of less than 1 Caliber Ratio.?This very combination could be deceiving.
2. The leader's caliber serves as the baseline for the Caliber Ratio, meaning a leader with a higher caliber outperforms another with a lower caliber, even with the same team Caliber Ratios.
3. This is not a well-studied nor it is a well-established concept. It's a random framework that I came up with when was put off the grid?on?a long?flight. So thank you for bearing with me thus far.?