THE ART OF
DELEGATING (I)
When
we refer to "saving time", delegating is an important aspect, as we
can't do everything ourselves. Therefore, we should look for
trustworthy people who we can delegate certain aspects to, so they can
do the tasks for us.
The consultant Kathy
Paauw establishes that "delegating is more than just
transfering work. It means involving others with the responsability of
the results, giving someone else the freedom to make decisions on how
to achieve the results".
For an expert in these things,
we can look to Harold Koontz, who explains the
following: "administrators should realize that a law of comparative
administrative advantage exists, similar to the law of economic
comparative advantage which is applied to nations. The comarative
economic advantage explains the following: administrators should
realize that a law of comparative advantage exists, similar to the law
of economic advantage which applies to the nations. The comparative
economic advantage states that a country gets richer if they export
what they produce less efficienty, even if they can produce the
imported goods at a lower cost than any other nation.
Administrators
can contribute more to a company if they concentrate on the most
beneficial tasks for the company's objectives and assign other
activities to their subordinates, in spite of the fact that they could
carry out those jobs more efficiently.
Many of us have the "bad
habit" or taking work home, we complain that our work timetable doesn't
give us enough time to carry out our work, but one of the best way of
decreasing work is by delegating others to help us.
The
more we delegate, the more our skills as administrators or executives
will increase and we will be able to carry out more than we ever
imagined.
Kathy
Paauw proposes the following advice for when we
have to delegate work to our colleagues.
1.
Select the most adequate person for the job.
It is always frightening delegating activities, but if we do not do it,
we will always be overwhelmed and we will not give our colleagues the
opportunity to gain experience and learn new challenges. As we get to
know how staff react, we will gain confidence to then delegate
activities that imply greater responsibility.
2.
Give enough information.
When you delegate work, do
not keep certain information to yourself, always give the necessary and
sufficient information so that the person can carry out the activity
the best way possible. Besides, it is important that the
person who has been delegated knows his role, that he knows how
important his role is to the company. It is also necessary for him to
know what is expected from his work, to measure the success or failure
of the operation, so that the employee has a clear idea of what he
wants to achieve and what is expected of him.
I know executives that assign
responsibilities to their employees but don't give them enough
information, documents from previous projects, etc. In this case, the
employees find themselves carrying out activities from "Zero" over and
over again. When in reality the project has already been started and
they could get better results if they were to start from an established
starting point.
3. Delegate the whole project to one person
and give him all of the responsibility. If we want the work to be successful, we
should give the whole project to just one person and we should give him
all of the responsibility and authority so that he can successfully
carry out the project. Besides, it is necessary to let
the whole company know that this person has been given this project and
that he has the responsbility to carry it out.
However, the end result will
always fall on your sholders, always remember this. One of the best
ways to let the organization know that someone is in charge of a
certain project is through meetings which take place during the work
week.
4. Focus on the results, not the process.
Often we delegate responsibility, and despite this we are constantly
supervising the development of the tasks, as we want them to be carried
out exactly how we planned. However, the best thing to do is delegate
and then leave the employee to use his/her initiative to resolve
problems as he/she believes most convenient. Therefore, this message is
for all those that focus on the results, not in how to get to them.
Except for exceptional cases, this suggestions applies to the majority
of work and personal situations.
