The Fine Art of Delegation

It was the spring of 1974 and I was an 8th grader in the Barrington (Illinois) Middle School Band. On this particular Saturday night, I was given the honor of acting as conductor.

(Yes, believe it or not, that’s me and my baton on the left.)

Although most world class directors don’t usually work in a school gymnasium, I was giving my best to a Beatles medley that included “Yesterday,” “Eleanor Rigby” and “Michelle.”

As a long time flutist in the band, I had thought that being the conductor would be a lot of fun, and I’d especially looked forward to bossing everyone around!

Oops! Big surprise. Because in the weeks leading up to my debut, I learned that being a good conductor isn’t about bossing people around. You don’t tell the musicians what to do and walk away. In fact, you don’t tell them what to do at all. You work with them to coordinate their individual efforts into one (hopefully) coherent, melodic work of art.

Not only did I have to keep the beat for everyone, but I also needed to persuade a group of individual musicians to interpret music according to my point of view while getting them to behave in a coordinated way.

I then had to be able to track how they were doing in order to get the desired result. Looking back, I realize that this was the first time I began to figure out the complexity of delegating, something I was reminded of during a conversation with my client, Joseph, when he asked for my help managing his staff.

As I explained to Joseph, delegating is not about abdicating responsibility or letting go. Delegating means you don’t actually have to do the work, but you do need to know what’s happening, when it’s happening (or not), and how to keep things going.

Here are four things to think about when delegating:

1.  Decide what you want to delegate.For a small business owner, this is a very difficult task. We tend to think that everything needs our touch when, in fact, it really only needs our oversight.

But doing all the work yourself doesn’t give your business any leverage. So your first task is to find things, even simple things, that you can release hands-on control. For example, you might start with delegating the purchase of printer ink for your office.

2.  Make a clear request.You might say, “Hey John, I’d like you to be in charge of printer ink for the office. Do you have a couple of minutes to talk about it?”

And then the conversation goes like this: “John, there seem to be two problems with printer ink in the office. One is that we’re always running out, and two; we’re spending a ton of money on it. Would you please make a list of all the printers in the office and find the most cost effective way for us to buy ink? Please also order two back-up cartridges for each printer and make sure we always have those extras in stock. If you can think of other ways to organize the ink or additional ways to save money, I’d love to hear them. How does that sound? And do you think you can have that finished by Thursday?” John asks questions and the two of you agree. Cool.

3.  Monitor Progress.This is the biggie. Remember that you’re the owner/manager. And even if you delegated to another manager, you’re still their manager. There are two ways to do this.

One is the “Oh no, we’re out of ink again. What happened?” method, which I don’t recommend.Instead try the proactive follow-up method, which works great every time. On Thursday, when the project has hit a milestone, if you don’t already have a meeting scheduled with John to check in, you might stop by his desk and ask, “John, have you had a chance to make a list of the printers yet? How’s that ink price research going?”

At this moment it’s important to be very clear about whether or not John is on track. If he isn’t, he needs to know what’s not working and, more importantly, why it’s not working and what he can do about it. You’ll want to make it clear to John that the deadline is his deadline, not yours. You’re simply monitoring progress.

4.  Acknowledge Completion.When the job is done well be generous and specific in your praise. “Printer ink is no longer a problem in the office, John. You’ve saved us valuable time by always having it available and you saved us $100 a month by finding a better source to buy from.”

And when it doesn’t go so well, that needs to be talked about too. “We have printer ink for all our printers now, John, but we’re still spending more than I’d like. Let’s talk about ways that we can lower the cost.”

Sometimes it seems faster to do things yourself, and it almost always is in the short term. But as a small business owner, you need to build a team that can grow with the needs of your company and support its expansion. For that to happen you need to take yourself out of the trenches and on to the conductor’s podium.

And by the way, if you run into Paul McCartney, please send him my apologies.