Published
Articles
Originally
Published in The Business Journal of CNY.
Owners/Managers
Delegation Program
The whole philosophy
of successful delegation hinges on slowly building faith in your
staff, by slowly letting go of various tasks, understanding there
will surly be errors, correcting them, and most importantly, teaching
the delegated how to prevent the mistakes from happening again.
You have to
make the commitment that, to simplify your life in the future, the
only realistic way to get there is to delegate duties to your managers,
lead people, and production employees. This is a large initial time
investment, but one that has a great long-term payback.
The light at
the end of the tunnel is expanded freedom of your time, maximizing
your time to be spent doing those thing which only you as the owner
can do, and to improve your quality of your life. This philosophy,
by the way, and very importantly, also needs to trickle down to
all of your managers, and their managers. That is what separates
a successful company from a stagnant or plateauing one, incapable
of moving forward and expanding, lacking the depth of skill sets
to do so.
Letting go of
authority is one of the most difficult processes for an owner to
do, especially one who built the company from the bottom up, and
who did it all. After all, how could anyone possibly do it as well,
or god forbid, better? Please understand that your way is not the
only way. Your way may be preferred, and even better, but if you
are truly going to benefit from delegating, you will often have
to accept alternative methods, as long as the end result is equal,
or better. This is hard to do. I realize this. But often, when you
get over it, and reflect on the new ways, you might realize that
is could even be better.
Much more importantly,
you will stifle creativity within your company, discourage employees
from trying new ideas (you say your company has a suggestion program.
Then why, if you will not listen and act?), and take away the very
key characteristic you need in a manager; the ability to be creative,
solve problems, and think on their feet. This creates confidence
in them by them and by you.
The inability
to let go (more inherent in older owners) is one of the primary
reasons companies fail or stagnate. Then owners question is it all
really worth it. They lose the ability to reach the personal goals
they sought when they started (or took over) the company due to
lack of available free time. You owe it to your customers to make
yourself available for them when they need you, rather than being
out on the shop floor doing work others could do.
Total and open
communications between you and the person delegated to, are essential.
You can not assume that once you have given instructions, your job
is done. First, make them feed it back to you in their own words
(and pictures if necessary), what they understand you said. Then.
If you agree, give them benchmarks, to absolutely not go beyond
if there is any question that the project is not 100% on track.
Assure them that you would strongly prefer that they come to you
or your delegate quickly. In fact, make it clear that you will be
disappointed should they proceed past a benchmark uncertain, only
to find out further in the process when the cost is much higher
to remedy, more has been invested, and the customer relationship
can be blemished. Give them the path to use when they reach that
point, be it seeing you immediately, or, in your absence, a more
senior person in the company you trust to do the right thing. The
right thing may be to stop the project until you come back. It may
be to contact you off-site or at home immediately, depending on
the urgency of the project. People deal very well with rules, once
they are clear, where the lines of decision-making are not to be
crossed.
The one sure
thing, is that, once you have a few success experiences behind you,
you will get more comfortable in delegating more, and maximizing
the value of your own time. The price will be high a first, but,
done properly, the curve will move in your favor over a period of
time. To move the company forward, you have to make this commitment
to yourself and to your company.
The secret of
success in business is delegating as much work as possible downward
to the lowest paid, QUALIFIED person. Note the emphasis on qualified.
This philosophy plays to every employees strengths, and compensates
for their weaknesses. It gives them the ability to grow, while allowing
you to gain a comfort level that you have made the right selection.
You will not always do that! Be prepared. Monitoring this process
is a very intregal and critical part of it. Learn from your experiences
and do not repeat them.
Nobody picks
up immediately, at goes right to the highest level of experience.
It takes time, nurturing, a well planned training program, successes
and failures, and lots of patience. Without patience, this will
surly fail. It also takes a manager/owner with the guts to know
when to cut their losses, and move on to investing in someone else.
Often, you did what you could, both sides tried, but the experiment
fails for a variety of reasons. Irrelevant! The person had a chance,
may have another one in the future, but for now, goes back to being
a valued production worker, as they must have been before you selected
them for training.
All these possibilities
need to be explained up-front, so the employee understands the value
of the opportunity you are offering them, and the non-stigmatism
attached should they not reach the desired level during this initial
probationary stage. They need to know, and to have seen in happen
with others, that only a percentage of people put into this program
will move up to the next level. There is no shame in trying and
failing.
One last very
important factor! Assuming the right level of technical skills,
assess the prospective employee based on their relationships with
other employees, with other managers, which side of the fence do
they usually fall to between employee and company issues, are they
respected (not liked) by fellow employees and potential subordinates),
the track record of their learning curve in the past, and their
willingness to show flexibility, have they set positive examples
in the past, how well they have blended into the company culture,
and maybe most importantly, your personal relationship with them.
Get started
today!
Dennis Hoppe is President of Change Management Implementation, Inc. in Brockport, NY. He has been a small business advisor to owners of hundreds of companies since 1989. Visit his web sites at www.dhoppe.com and www.hmcexecutivecoaching.com, or call him at 800-724-3525.
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