One of the most important skills a small business CEO or
other senior manager must master is delegation. The reason
is very simple. He cannot do it all himself. Unfortunately
delegation is not that simple, and mastering it takes
commitment and practice. If one is to be a successful
manager, delegation is a necessity.
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One of the most important skills a small business CEO or
other senior manager must master is delegation. The reason
is very simple. He cannot do it all himself. Unfortunately
delegation is not that simple, and mastering it takes
commitment and practice.
So what is delegation? Probably the easiest way to answer
that question is to demonstrate what it is not. Delegation
is not giving instructions and monitoring the result. That
is supervision, and it is what most of us do. The reason it
is not delegation is that authority is not transferred in
the process.
So why is that so different? Well, if you do not delegate
authority, then every time something happens which is not
covered by your specific instructions, no one has the
authority to make a decision, and they must come back to you
for further instructions. That is inefficient. It is also
aggravating for your people.
A basic principle of organizational management is that
enough authority needs to be delegated to a manager to take
the actions necessary for accomplishing an objective. It is
also necessary for the limits of the authority to be clearly
defined. This means that the subordinate to whom you have
delegated the task knows not only what they may decide, but
also what they may not.
You notice we never mentioned delegation of responsibility.
Certainly in the process of delegation we give employees the
responsibility of completing tasks, but unfortunately for
owners and CEO's, they retain the responsibility. That means
it is up to them to ensure that their employee has the
training, the resources and the authority to get the job
done right. I have found that the managers who truly
understand that failures by their subordinates are really
their own failures turn out to be the best managers.
The question of whether to delegate or not is often
considered a personal choice on the part of many managers.
In reality, there is no choice. If one is to be a successful
manager delegation is a necessity..
The Author
After 25 years consulting to small and medium sized
companies,
Mike Anderson,
principal of
Train Me To Be a CEO
realized that the most important part of his work was
training the CEO, and the reason he was such a good
consultant was that he did that very well.
Trained as an engineer, he became a CEO of a midsize
corporation at the age of 35. After a spell at Harvard
Business School he entered the world of consulting.
3. Ongoing mentorship. Begins with a
minimum two day one on one, but continues with monthly or quarterly follow up sessions. (Smart
and probably Best!)
.
References
A New England Contractor
"Mike Anderson has been working diligently with the upper
management team at (our firm). Mike is
extremely knowledgeable and has an exceptional way of
dealing with many different personalities. He has worked
very closely with the Sales Team to impress upon them the
importance of using a consistent method of estimating. He
was instrumental in restructuring our accounting procedures."
