From the Management tune-up programme available on Cd’s from www.leadersedge.co.za

If you have a sign stuck on your door, or one stuck in your mind for when you have advanced a bit further up your career ladder, that says “Manager”, it may be time to stop doing things and to start making things happen. Particularly if you are the owner-manager of a small business!

 

Typically the owner-manager starts their business because they like what they do. They consider that they do it best. They are a leader in their field and they get head-down supplying the greatest amount possible of quality gadgets or services. After all it’s volumes that makes the money isn’t it?

 

The point arrives when you are working all of the hours there are in a week at “doing” things at the workplace then taking home a fat briefcase full of those other nasty things that you don’t like to do, overnight, or over the weekend. Burn out lays ahead of you. Time to redefine your position as a true manager and learn, amongst other management skills, to DELEGATE!  A real manager does not have time to be a “doer”. You simply have too much to accomplish to be head-down turning out widget-didgets, even if they are the world’s very best and you have a personal passion for making them. So what does a manager do?  A manager’s job is planning and organising; making decisions;  supervising people and work assignments;  controlling and directing things like demand, volume, quality; initiating creative business ideas and most importantly motivating and developing his, or her people to advance to new levels of competence.

 

But get the right idea about delegation. Delegation is NOT getting rid of everything that you don’t want to do yourself. It’s NOT giving out to your staff everything that they know how to do and doing the rest yourself. It’s not a case of ordering people about. And it’s definitely not an excuse for getting someone else to do your work. Delegation is handing down responsibility… and that’s where the art of it lies because effective delegation can advance and improve the work satisfaction and productivity of every person in your department, or your business, and make you a better manager and leader. 

 

So how do you make the change that seems like a quantum leap?

First you change your attitude. Understand that to be a compulsive “doer” is seriously counter productive for a manager. Next get down to understanding the team you have around you. What are their strengths and weaknesses? who seems to have more capability than they are using? Who actually knows more than they are saying, or showing?

Who has been for a long time in the same position within the business and who might be advanced? Who seems to accept responsibility and enjoy a challenge?  Who seems unhappy and why are their performance levels lower than others?

 

Remember, if your people see nothing at which they have the opportunity to excel then they have no opportunity for achievement and will therefore earn no recognition, or advancement within the business. This attitude is highly de-motivational and has an effect right through to the bottom line.

 

Two vital principles of good delegation are therefore 1) Training and 2) Control.  You can’t just hand down responsibility to any old body and kick their butt if the job doesn’t get done right. You shouldn’t drop your subordinates in at the deep end and see if they sink, or swim. You have to train your subordinates on an ongoing basis to achieve your objectives in line with your over all business objectives, so that you can be pretty sure that they are capable of performing the work assignment you’re about to give them. Then you have to input some kind of control so that you know the job is being done to the standard you’ve prescribed. The control is just as important as the training, because if you don’t have accurate feedback you can’t be sure that the job is done properly and you end up doing the job again yourself.

 

Controls are usually of one, or two types. That is 1) quantity or/and 2) quality.  How many units do you require to be produced over what period of  time.  How many items must be made, moved, installed?  How many calls must a salesman make in a given time span? Secondly what quality do you require?  What is good enough for your worker may not be to your standard, or expectation. If you want it sandpapered smooth, exactly how smooth do you want it? So let them know the control, with actual measurable standards of quantity and quality wherever possible.

 

It’s also important to remember that you may be giving a work assignment to someone who’s never done such a thing before. Although you are perfectly familiar with the work and would get it right first time, they might struggle. Give them a little help and a little patience. Excellence, remember, comes from the experience of doing things right. Experience in the first place comes from doing things wrong.

 By Phil Sinclair

Cd’s on Delegation and many other subjects concerning basic management training are available at low cost from the Leader’s-Edge website www.leadersedge.co.za