THE BUSY MANAGER'S GUIDE TO DELEGATION

AMACOM

Contents

Chapter One

The Five-Step Delegation Process 1 Determine which tasks to delegate 2 Identify the right person for the job 3 Assign the task 4 Monitor progress and provide feedback 5 Evaluate performance

Helen has just received a phone call from her boss requesting that she take responsibility for the company's three-day orientation program for newly hired salespeople. The program includes some product training but is largely focused on introducing the newcomers to the departments and people with whom they will interact both in the office and while working in their assigned territories. "I like to pass this job around to our most successful sales managers," the boss told her. "I know that I can rely on you to do a great job." The gratification she felt on hearing her boss's flattering words quickly fades as she stares into the screen of her work-scheduling software. Every day is crammed with deadlines, meetings, travel, customer appointments, and other obligations. Where will she find the five days she needs to plan and execute the orientation session? She can't say no to her boss's request, but she can't invent more hours and days either. The solution, as Helen sees it, is to postpone some appointments and travel and to delegate some of her calendar and "to-do" items to other members of the sales team. But which items?

Helen faces one of the perennial decisions faced by all managers and many supervisors: In making the most of their limited time, they must periodically off-load certain work to others. But which should they retain for themselves and which should be delegated? To find the answer, let's jump right in with Step 1, which requires looking at all the things that weigh on your time and determining which can—and which cannot—be outsourced to others.

In principle, you should delegate as much as possible; doing so will develop the capabilities of your staff and give you more time for important and strategic work. You can delegate anything from simple tasks to decisions to entire projects or processes. Generally, you should consider delegating anything that your subordinates—considering their skills and available time—are capable of handling or can be trained to handle. These tasks will be determined by your situation. As you think about what you should delegate, be guided first by this question: What tasks are you now doing that do not require your unique knowledge, skills, or authority? The answer will identify opportunities for possible delegation. There's still no assurance that the right people with the right skills and sufficient time will be available to take them on.

SHARED AND UNIQUE SKILLS

You and your subordinates very likely share some skills in common (see Figure 1-1). These may be the ability to contact customers via telephone, by e-mail, or face-to-face; to generate monthly department progress reports; to schedule meetings; to keep track of when people plan to take their vacations; to check the accuracy of expense reports; to provide coaching to new employees; and so forth. The list of shared skills may be long, especially if you've worked your way up the ladder in the department. You had to learn all those things to get where you are now. And even though you're the manager, it's likely that some people have specialized skills you don't have. For example, the manager of an ad department may have no idea how to do what his graphic designer can accomplish. But there is also a skill set that is uniquely yours, things that only you can do by virtue of your training, experience, or authority. Budgeting, planning, sales forecasting, customer/supplier negotiating, effective meeting management, and mentoring are just a few of the skills that we normally think of as uniquely managerial skills. True, a sharp protg may have mastered some of these skills, but few subordinates of lower or middle managers will have them.

Now that you understand the shared skill set in your work group, consider the many tasks you are personally handling that fall within that shared skill set. Remember, these are tasks you are doing that do not require your unique capabilities as a manager—things that other people could do. These may include developing monthly reports, setting up outside appointments, filing, or correspondence. To be systematic, make a list of these tasks, like the one shown in Figure 1-2. Now take a look at your list and ask yourself, "Which of these tasks could I reasonably delegate to someone else?" Put a check mark next to these. Don't worry about who will pick up these tasks. We'll get to that in the next chapter.

Whenever possible, identify entire tasks, not bits and pieces of jobs. By making one person responsible for an entire task, not only do you give that person a greater sense of control and responsibility, but you also avoid the coordination problems and "hand-off errors" that typically plague jobs that are delegated among several people. If the task is too large for one person to take it on, consider delegating it to a team. Delegating to a team is different from delegating different parts of a task to different individuals. A team can organize the work assigned to it and hold itself accountable as a group for the work's successful completion.

THE QUALITY ISSUE

Quality is the final issue to consider in identifying tasks to delegate. By quality we mean a job done right and on time. This issue must be foremost in your mind whenever you delegate. Ask yourself the following questions:

* Is the task so technical that extensive coaching will be necessary to bring the delegatee to a high level of proficiency? Your schedule may be too overloaded to take on a big coaching project at this time (but do incorporate it into your future plans so you can move this task off your plate).

* Is there enough time to recruit the person and explain how to do the job? If a deadline is just around the corner, you may not have time to accomplish this.

* What's "good enough" for this task? Will an "adequate" job be satisfactory, given the nature of the task? Not every task requires a master's touch.

* What will be the consequences of a job done poorly? If the consequences of less than perfect performance are manageable, then you can start an employee on the learning curve and monitor the outcome. If perfect execution is critical to the achievement of a major goal, consider the risk you'll be taking in handing it off to a subordinate.

TASKS THAT NEVER SHOULD BE DELEGATED

A few essential managerial activities should stay with you and never be delegated to others. These include hiring, performance review, firing and disciplinary actions, and certain specific tasks that have been delegated to you by someone else.

Hiring

It's usually a good idea to seek your subordinates' insights about job candidates. Many managers routinely ask their people to meet with visiting candidates to describe workplace routines and answer any questions the candidates may have. Afterward, they share with managers their impressions of the candidates. This collaboration benefits everyone. It is important that candidates understand the environment of the job for which they are applying, and it is equally important that current employees get a chance to interact with these individuals who may be joining their work group as peers. Southwest Airlines, the most successful company in its industry, uses a panel of employees from different levels and functions to interview and screen job applicants. The final decision, however, remains with the manager for whom an applicant will work. Subordinate input to the decision is fine, but hiring is not something that can or should be delegated.

Along this same vein, you should retain the job of selecting people for project teams. Be open to advice, but make these selections yourself.

Performance Review

Many companies use annual performance review sessions to appraise employee performance, identify areas in which the person needs training or coaching, and communicate employee goals for the coming year. Is this one of your company's routines? These reviews, based on face-to-face meetings between managers and their direct reports, are also used to make decisions about bonuses and promotions. Naturally, performance review is a responsibility that stays with you; it cannot be delegated. However, you should be aware that there is a mechanism through which employees can legitimately weigh in on the workplace performance of others—including their own bosses. It's called 360-degree feedback. With this appraisal method, anonymous information about an individual's workplace performance is collected from people who regularly interact with that person: subordinates, work team members, and "internal customers." In most cases, 360-degree feedback provides an assessment of an individual's performance that is more balanced and informed than the traditional boss's assessment of a subordinate. If your company uses "360s" you may have access to some overview material from these reviews (the details are usually confidential for the person being reviewed). Still, the formal appraisal of an employee's performance measured against his or her objectives is a task that stays with the manager.

Firing and Disciplinary Actions

Just as a manager cannot delegate a hiring decision, he or she cannot delegate actions that involve dismissing or disciplining another employee. That responsibility remains with the manager, even though managers almost universally point to firing and disciplinary actions as their least favorite responsibilities. That responsibility is tempered in some workplaces—especially in team-oriented workplaces—by peer pressure on slackers. High-performance work teams, especially those paid on the basis of measurable output, are intolerant of members who will not or cannot carry their own weight. For example, work teams at Nucor Corporation, a highly productive and profitable steelmaker, have a reputation for being very self-directed and self-disciplining. Because inefficiency by one person hits all team members in their pocketbooks, slothful members are pressured by their peers to either clean up their act or look for work elsewhere.

Certain Tasks That Have Been Delegated to You by Someone Else

Let's suppose that your boss has delegated a job to you: She wants you to make an analysis of all suppliers used by your division, noting the level of business each does with all departments and examining the record for possible conflicts of interest. Normally, you could sub-delegate the task of compiling a list of suppliers and their sales to one of your subordinates, assuming that you have someone capable of doing the job correctly. However, this may be a situation in which your boss (or someone else) has delegated the job to you with the understanding that you alone will handle it. Perhaps the job requires a level of trust or confidentiality that the boss sees you as uniquely qualified to handle. Perhaps it's a sensitive matter, or, for political reasons, the boss wants someone with managerial status to be seen doing the job. Whatever the reason, you must be alert to situations of this type and recognize that you must handle it yourself. If you are not sure, ask your boss.

CHAPTER REVIEW

Try the following open-book review quiz to find out how much you've learned in this chapter:

1. What is the first question you should ask to identify tasks you might delegate to others? __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________

2. A "shared skill set" is a set of skills that you and your subordinates share. What skills do you and your subordinates have in common? __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________

3. Why is it a good idea to delegate entire jobs, not parts of them? __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________

4. List at least three tasks that a manager should never delegate to a subordinate. __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________

5. How should you handle delegation of unpleasant tasks? __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________

Chapter Two

Helen, whose situation we encountered at the beginning of the previous chapter, needs to clear five days of previous commitments from her calendar in order to comply with her boss's request that she run the orientation program for new salespeople. She immediately reschedules three travel days, leaving just two days of other commitments to clear away. "There's no way that I can cancel, reschedule, or delegate a day's worth of that work," she tells herself, "but I can enlist some help with the job of preparing for the orientation program." With that strategy in mind, she makes a short list of prep work that has to be taken care of prior to the event (see Figure 2-1). She quickly sees that she will have to do two tasks herself, and share another task with someone else—someone with experience in making PowerPoint slides. The other tasks have the potential to be delegated if she can find people to do them. Do you ever find yourself in Helen's situation? This chapter will help you by explaining the second step of the delegating process: identifying the right people for work you can legitimately delegate. The choice is important. To avoid a disappointing outcome, you must delegate to a person who has the following characteristics:

* Time available

* Interest in the task

* Capability and reliability

* Closeness to the problem or issue

* Potential to benefit from the assignment

(Continues...)

Excerpted from THE BUSY MANAGER'S GUIDE TO DELEGATIONby Richard A. Luecke Perry McIntosh Copyright © 2009 by American Management Association. Excerpted by permission of AMACOM. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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