Two weeks ago my email about delegating got a lot of replies. My favorite came from a reader named Jamie, who runs a law firm in Australia. He wrote back with something his team uses called SMEAC.
I'd never heard of it. Now I use it.
SMEAC comes from the military. It's how they hand off orders — enough detail that someone can execute without you standing over their shoulder, but not so much that you've wasted an hour writing a novel nobody reads.
It's what I've been trying to explain...Jamie just did a better job of it.
Here's SMEAC, with a VA slant.
S - Situation
The "why now" and "why this matters." Most bad instructions skip this completely. You just say "post this to Instagram" and expect your VA to read your mind about the context.
Tell them what's going on. What's this connected to? What do they need to know that isn't obvious from outside your head?
They need to know the background and the reason.
If you only teach the steps, your VA can follow steps. If you teach the situation, your VA can make good decisions when something doesn't go the way you planned. That's the difference between someone who does exactly what you said and someone who does what you actually needed.
M - Mission
One sentence. What does "done" look like?
Not "improve our social media." That's not a mission, that's a vibe.
"Post one Reel by Friday at 9am." That's a mission. You'll know instantly if it happened.
If your VA can't tell you whether they finished the task, you didn't give them a mission. You gave them a suggestion.
E - Execution
The how. The actual steps.
Record a Loom. Walk through it once, screen recorded, talking through what you're doing and why. That video is now your training — forever, for every VA you ever hire to do that task again.
And don't build this before you've hired someone. Training built for a person who doesn't exist yet is a guess, not training.
A - Administration (and Logistics)
What do they need to actually do the job? Logins, a tool, a template, access to a shared folder.
Don't get stuck here. Give the access and see what happens.
C - Command and Communication
Who do they report to? How do they tell you it's done — a daily email report, a Slack message, a Basecamp comment?
This is also where trust gets built. When your VA knows exactly who's in charge and how to reach them, they stop guessing and start working. When they don't, they sit on a question for two days because they're afraid to bother the wrong person.
Try it on the next thing you hand off. Even a short version — two sentences of Situation, one sentence of Mission, a Loom for Execution — beats what most of us actually send our VAs, which is "hey can you handle this" with zero context.
Thanks, Jamie, for the framework.
And if you don't have anyone to SMEAC a task to yet — that's the actual bottleneck. Go to OnlineJobs.ph and find someone.
John
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