In Isaac Asimov’s short story “My Son, the Physicist,” the protagonist is trying to overcome a delay. Due to distance, there's a 12-hour delay in communicating with the expedition on Pluto. While visiting, his mother suggests a solution: both sides should “just keep talking.”

You need to anticipate multiple outcomes and not wait for feedback on each step - just keep moving forward.

This is what you should be doing whenever you delegate a task, whenever you outsource. You know what you want and can predict different paths others might take.

But…

You need deep knowledge to be able to do that. This knowledge comes from two sources.

• One is experience. When you have done something repeatedly for long enough, you gain knowledge that others don’t have.

Innovative ideas, by their nature, do not lend themselves to this kind of knowledge.

• The other source of knowledge is more fundamental - knowing the essence of what you want to achieve.

When you clearly see the few essential parts and how they combine to make your idea work, you’ll be able to steer others and anticipate the future. You’ll be able to steer them, not only to the right paths, but also away from the potential wrong ones.

You don’t want to sit and wait. Instead, you want to move forward in the right direction.