The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses.

Napoleon Hill

When someone gives you an important task and you want to impress this certain somebody then remember to GET IT DONE!

If course it seems reasonable to come back with a good excuse and he will most likely not judge you if you have good reasons, but what is more important is that the person remembers giving you a task and you being unable to complete it.

No matter how good the reason, the next time he will think of someone to complete an important task he will not think like
“Who could get it done if there were no obstacles”
but rather
“Who gets my shit done without coming back to me before he is finished with a task”.
You may be lucky enough that there is not such a person and you as the second choice will still be the man to do the job but would it not be better to be the first choice to begin with?

Of course it would be. And that is why you get your shit done! If someone gives you a task and you want to help him out, you get it done.

By the way, this is one of the very idealistic posts, don’t take it literally. There are perfect reasons for coming back to a person without having fullfilled their tasks but this is a general idea of how work should function and how delegation of work should apply.

/phil