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The Art of Delegation !!!
Delegation is a
skill of which we have all heard - but which few understand. It can be
used either as an excuse for dumping failure onto the shoulders of
subordinates, or as a dynamic tool for motivating and training your
team to realize their full potential.
Everyone knows about delegation. Most Managers hear about it in the
cradle as mother talks earnestly to the baby-sitter: "just enjoy the
television ... this is what you do if ... if there is any trouble call
me at ..."; people have been writing about it for nearly half a
millennium; yet few actually understand it.
Delegation underpins a Style of Management which allows your staff to
use and develop their skills and knowledge to the full potential.
Without delegation, you lose their full value.
As the ancient quotation above suggests, delegation is primarily about
entrusting your authority to others. This means that they can act and
initiate independently; and that they assume responsibility with you
for certain tasks. If something goes wrong, you remain responsible
since you are the Manager; the trick is to delegate in such a way that
things get done but do not go (badly) wrong.
Objective
The objective of delegation is to get the job done by someone else.
Not just the simple tasks of reading instructions and turning a lever,
but also the decision making and changes which depend upon new
information. With delegation, your staff have the authority to react
to situations without referring back to you.
If you tell the janitor to empty the bins on Tuesdays and Fridays, the
bins will be emptied on Tuesdays and Fridays. If the bins overflow on
Wednesday, they will be emptied on Friday. If instead you said to
empty the bins as often as necessary, the janitor would decide how
often and adapt to special circumstances. You might suggest a regular
schedule (teach the janitor a little personal time management), but by
leaving the decision up to the janitor you will apply his/her local
knowledge to the problem. Consider this frankly: do you want to be an
expert on bin emptying, can you construct an instruction to cover all
possible contingencies? If not, delegate to someone who gets paid for
it.
To enable someone else to do the job for you,
you must ensure that:
they know what you want
they have the authority to achieve it
they know how to do it.
These all depend upon communicating clearly the nature of the task,
the extent of their discretion, and the sources of relevant
information and knowledge.
Information
Such a system can only operate successfully if the decision-makers
(your staff) have full and rapid access to the relevant information.
This means that you must establish a system to enable the flow of
information. This must at least include regular exchanges between your
staff so that each is aware of what the others are doing. It should
also include briefings by you on the information which you have
received in your role as manager; since if you need to know this
information to do your job, your staff will need to know also if they
are to do your (delegated) job for you.
One of the main claims being made for computerized information
distribution is that it facilitates the rapid dissemination of
information. Some protagonists even suggest that such systems will
instigate changes in managerial power sharing rather than merely
support them: that the "enknowledged" workforce will rise up, assume
control and innovate spontaneously. You may not believe this vision,
but you should understand the premise. If a manager restricts access
to information, then only he/she is able to make decisions which rely
upon that information; once that access is opened to many others, they
too can make decisions - and challenge those of the manager according
to additional criteria. The manager who fears this challenge will
never delegate effectively; the manager who recognizes that the staff
may have additional experience and knowledge (and so may enhance the
decision-making process) will welcome their input; delegation ensures
that the staff will practise decision-making and will feel that their
views are welcome.
Effective control
One of the main phobias about delegation is that by giving others
authority, a manager loses control. This need not be the case. If you
train your staff to apply the same criteria as you would yourself (by
example and full explanations) then they will be exercising your
control on you behalf. And since they will witness many more
situations over which control may be exercised (you can't be in
several places at once) then that control is exercised more diversely
and more rapidly than you could exercise it by yourself. In
engineering terms: if maintaining control is truly your concern, then
you should distribute the control mechanisms to enable parallel and
autonomous processing.
Staggered Development
To understand delegation, you really have to think about people.
Delegation cannot be viewed as an abstract technique, it depends upon
individuals and individual needs. Let us take a lowly member of staff
who has little or no knowledge about the job which needs to be done.
Do you say: "Jimmy, I want a draft tender for contract of the new
Hydro Powerstation on my desk by Friday"? No. Do you say: "Jimmy,
Jennifer used to do the tenders for me. Spend about an hour with her
going over how she did them and try compiling one for the new Hydro
Powerstation. She will help you for this one, but do come to me if she
is busy with a client. I want a draft by Friday so that I can look
over it with you"? Possibly.
The key is to delegate gradually. If you present someone with a task
which is daunting, one with which he/she does not feel able to cope,
then the task will not be done and your staff will be severely
demotivated. Instead you should build-up gradually; first a small task
leading to a little development, then another small task which builds
upon the first; when that is achieved, add another stage; and so on.
This is the difference between asking people to scale a sheer wall,
and providing them with a staircase. Each task delegated should have
enough complexity to stretch that member of staff - but only a little.
Jimmy needs to feel confident. He needs to believe that he will
actually be able to achieve the task which has been given to him. This
means that either he must have the sufficient knowledge, or he must
know where to get it or where to get help. So, you must enable access
to the necessary knowledge. If you hold that knowledge, make sure that
Jimmy feels able to come to you; if someone else holds the knowledge,
make sure that they are prepared for Jimmy to come to them. Only if
Jimmy is sure that support is available will he feel confident enough
to undertake a new job.
You need to feel confident in Jimmy: this means keeping an eye on him.
It would be fatal to cast Jimmy adrift and expect him to make it to
the shore: keep an eye on him, and a lifebelt handy. It is also a
mistake to keep wandering up to Jimmy at odd moments and asking for
progress reports: he will soon feel persecuted. Instead you must agree
beforehand how often and when you actually need information and decide
the reporting schedule at the onset. Jimmy will then expect these
encounters and even feel encouraged by your continuing support; you
will be able to check upon progress and even spur it on a little.
When you do talk to Jimmy about the project, you should avoid making
decisions of which Jimmy is capable himself. The whole idea is for
Jimmy to learn to take over and so he must be encouraged to do so. Of
course, with you there to check his decisions, Jimmy will feel freer
to do so. If Jimmy is wrong - tell him, and explain very carefully
why. If Jimmy is nearly right - congratulate him, and suggest possible
modifications; but, of course, leave Jimmy to decide. Finally, unless
your solution has significant merits over Jimmy's, take his: it costs
you little, yet rewards him much.
Constrained Availability
There is a danger with "open access" that you become too involved with
the task you had hoped to delegate. One successful strategy to avoid
this is to formalize the manner in which these conversation take
place. One formalism is to allow only fixed, regular encounters
(except for emergencies) so that Jimmy has to think about issues and
questions before raising them; you might even insist that he draw-up
an agenda. A second formalism is to refuse to make a decision unless
Jimmy has provided you with a clear statement of alternatives, pros
and cons, and his recommendation. This is my favourite. It allows
Jimmy to rehearse the full authority of decision making while secure
in the knowledge that you will be there to check the outcome. Further,
the insistence upon evaluation of alternatives promotes good decision
making practices. If Jimmy is right, then Jimmy's confidence increases
- if you disagree with Jimmy, he learns something new (provided you
explain your criteria) and so his knowledge increases. Which ever way,
he benefits; and the analysis is provided for you.
Outcomes and Failure
Let us consider your undoubtedly high standards. When you delegate a
job, it does not have to be done as well as you could do it (given
time), but only as well as necessary: never judge the outcome by what
you expect you would do (it is difficult to be objective about that),
but rather by fitness for purpose. When you delegate a task, agree
then upon the criteria and standards by which the outcome will be
judged.
You must enable failure. With appropriate monitoring, you should be
able to catch mistakes before they are catastrophic; if not, then the
failure is yours. You are the manager, you decided that Jimmy could
cope, you gave him enough rope to hang himself, you are at fault. Now
that that is cleared up, let us return to Jimmy. Suppose Jimmy gets
something wrong; what do you want to happen?
Firstly, you want it fixed. Since Jimmy made the mistake, it is likely
that he will need some input to develop a solution: so Jimmy must feel
safe in approaching you with the problem. Thus you must deal primarily
with the solution rather than the cause (look forward, not backwards).
The most desirable outcome is that Jimmy provides the solution.
Once that is dealt with, you can analyse the cause. Do not fudge the
issue; if Jimmy did something wrong say so, but only is very specific
terms. Avoid general attacks on his parents: "were you born this
stupid?", and look to the actual event or circumstance which led to
the error: "you did not take account of X in your decision". Your
objectives are to ensure that Jimmy:
understands the problem
feels confident enough to resume
implements some procedure to prevent recurrence.
The safest ethos to cultivate is one where Jimmy actually looks for
and anticipates mistakes. If you wish to promote such behaviour, you
should always praise Jimmy for his prompt and wise action in spotting
and dealing with the errors rather that castigate him for causing
them. Here the emphasis is placed upon checking/testing/monitoring of
ideas. Thus you never criticise Jimmy for finding an error, only for
not having safe-guards in place.
What to delegate
There is always the question of what to delegate and what to do
yourself, and you must take a long term view on this: you want to
delegate as much as possible to develop you staff to be as good as you
are now.
The starting point is to consider the activities you used to do before
you were promoted. You used to do them when you were more junior, so
someone junior can do them now. Tasks in which you have experience are
the easiest for you to explain to others and so to train them to take
over. You thus use your experience to ensure that the task is done
well, rather than to actually perform the task yourself. In this way
you gain time for your other duties and someone else becomes as good
as your once were (increasing the strength of the group).
Tasks in which your staff have more experience must be delegated to
them. This does not mean that you relinquish responsibility because
they are expert, but it does mean that the default decision should be
theirs. To be a good manager though, you should ensure that they spend
some time in explaining these decisions to you so that you learn their
criteria.
Decisions are a normal managerial function: these too should be
delegated - especially if they are important to the staff. In
practice, you will need to establish the boundaries of these decisions
so that you can live with the outcome, but this will only take you a
little time while the delegation of the remainder of the task will
save you much more.
In terms of motivation for your staff, you should distribute the more
mundane tasks as evenly as possible; and sprinkle the more exciting
onces as widely. In general, but especially with the boring tasks, you
should be careful to delegate not only the performance of the task but
also its ownership. Task delegation, rather than task assignment,
enables innovation. The point you need to get across is that the task
may be changed, developed, upgraded, if necessary or desirable. So
someone who collates the monthly figures should not feel obliged to
blindly type them in every first-Monday; but should feel empowered to
introduce a more effective reporting format, to use Computer Software
to enhance the data processing, to suggest and implement changes to
the task itself.
Negotiation
Since delegation is about handing over authority, you cannot dictate
what is delegated nor how that delegation is to be managed. To control
the delegation, you need to establish at the beginning the task
itself, the reporting schedule, the sources of information, your
availability, and the criteria of success. These you must negotiate
with your staff: only by obtaining both their input and their
agreement can you hope to arrive at a workable procedure.
When all is done for you
Once you have delegated everything, what do you do then?
You still need to monitor the tasks you have delegated and to continue
the development of your staff to help them exercise their authority
well.
There are managerial functions which you should never delegate - these
are the personal/personnel ones which are often the most obvious
additions to your responsibilities as you assume a managerial role.
Specifically, they include: motivation, training, team-building,
organization, praising, reprimanding, performance reviews, promotion.
As a MANAGER, you have a responsibility to represent and to develop
the effectiveness of your group Within the company; these are tasks
you can expand to fill your available time - Delegation is a Mechanism
for Creating that Opportunity.
Gerard M Blair is a Senior Lecturer in VLSI Design at the Department
of Electrical Engineering, The University of Edinburgh.
Lucy Doss
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