Improving delegation

When "just do it" just won't do it

by Francie Dalton

Poor delegation can easily be categorized as either inadequate or disabling. Within these two categories are no less that 12 classic and discrete errors in delegation. This article describes each, and provides easy-to-implement tips for how to avoid or correct them.

1. Failing to identify higher purpose served
Caught up in the rush of doing business, it's easy to delegate on the run, without articulating how the assignment enables the organization to achieve its strategic initiatives.

There are three important benefits to taking the extra minute or two required to articulate the linkage between the assignments and their higher purpose. 

1) It increases the perceived importance of the assignment.
2) It increases emotional commitment to stellar execution.
3) It equips management with tools to motivate the performance of and increase staff morale.

The technique to easily isolate and identify the higher purpose of an assignment is to ask yourself why the assignment is needed, what other outcome its accomplishment enables, and why that other outcome is needed.

2. Lack of clarity
Have you ever been surprised to discover at performance review time that one of your execs was oblivious to a requirement you thought was implicit? The key to ensuring clear expectations is the establishment of evidence-based performance measures.

Here's how. Start with an outcome you plan to assign. Rephrase it using a FIB (fill-in-the-blank) statement.

For example, if your original goal statement is: "Improve attendance at this year's annual convention," using the FIB technique would rephrase the statement into this question: "Attendance at this year's annual convention will be adequately improved when ________.”

The FIB technique forces you to clarify your expectations embedded in your goal statement by specifying any or all of the following: a certain number of attendees, a certain type of attendee, a certain revenue number, and so forth.

3. Emphasizing outcomes to the exclusion of method
How accomplishments are achieved often matters as much as what is accomplished. Yet this balance between outcome and method isn't reflected in executive goals and objectives.

Unless CEOs impose equal scrutiny on method and outcome when delegating, the impact of managerial behavior on corporate performance will stay under the radar, free to impede business results with impunity.

4. Failing to delegate developmentally
Aside from your fiduciary responsibility to develop your staff consistent with a sound succession plan, you have the additional responsibility of retaining "the best." 

Doing so in a competitive marketplace requires that you continually challenge the intellect of your execs. Determine what new or expanded responsibilities will stimulate the growth of each of your direct reports. Assign reasonable stretch goals. If they express doubts about their ability, respond by expressing confidence in them, and then push them off the cliff anyway. Create the opportunity for them to surprise and delight themselves by surpassing your expectations.

5. Failing to anticipate radial impacts
Hard to discern what assignments will bleed into the assignments of others? Are the involved parties coming to you angry and confused? Delegating a project to one department is likely to have implications for other departments. Keep it in mind as you delegate.

6. Abdication
When two or more managers are feuding, you can't step aside in disgust and tell the children to work it out themselves. Resolving disputes is part of your role as CEO. Clarify the outcomes for which each is responsible, crystallize the lines of authority, and establish the ground rules for necessary collaboration. Link  compliance to performance reviews/bonuses.

7. Deliberate Redundancy
If you're thinking that assigning the same task to multiple managers inspires healthy competition, you're sadly mistaken. This type of delegation actually inspires conflict. It takes the form of silo behavior: a lack of collaboration and information sharing, which generates additional redundancies and rework.

If your managers are like most, they're already starving for crumbs of recognition and don't want to share what little they get. Exacerbate this feeling of impoverishment at your peril. You'll erode both morale and loyalty.

8. Failing to impose accountability
Part and parcel of effective delegation is setting expectations regarding the consequences of both success and failure. Awareness of these consequences motivates the quality and speed of execution. If your exec doesn't deliver to spec, it's your responsibility to confront that failure.

A surprising number CEOs are so uncomfortable confronting poor performance they sidestep the imposition of negative consequences, feigning competing priorities to justify overlooking poor performance.

Well, guess what? If you're at the top, you don't get to use comfort as a determinant for action. Those who refuse to act lose their right to complain. If you're won't hold your managers accountable for poor performance, acknowledge your contribution to that poor performance and stop complaining about it.

9. Saving their bacon
Much like parents who do a child's homework thinking they're helping, swooping in to rescue an exec from his/her own sloppy performance stunts or prevents growth, generates resentment from peers and erodes the respect of subordinates. Get this: Unless you want to continue managing adolescent behavior, when you delegate responsibility, delegate the earned consequences.

10. Delegating to weakness
In the previous section, I suggested delegating in a way that stretches and develops, but that's not the same as delegating tasks outside the scope of one's competence. Classic examples of this include putting the stereotypical chief financial officer in charge of marketing; putting the stereotypical expert engineer at the podium presenting research findings to an audience of laypersons; moving your star outside sales professional into an inside management function; or staffing a highly regulated function with an entrepreneurial spirit.

11. Assigning responsibility in excess of authority
So pervasive is this error in delegation, and so negative is its impact on morale, it must be avoided at all costs.

12. The big one
Let's admit it. We're all trying to impress someone in our work context. As managers, the most obvious opportunity to do so is to achieve more with less; to consistently execute an overwhelming volume of work, on time and with apparent ease. You must generate priorities and stick to them. Make the hard choices.

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