🔒Delegate, communicate and manage more effectively

It's the unlovely little secret of many organizations. It's the universal challenge facing those responsible for the work of others. It's the sand in the gears of group productivity.

What is it? Delegating. Poor or nonexistent delegating.

Delegating is the reason we have managers. The manager's job is to clarify and specify what is to be done, then subdivide the workload and assign suitable portions of it to the various people who are under the manager's direction.

That is delegating, and sometimes it works. When it does, it produces results whose quantity and quality rise well above the possible accumulation of individual outcomes from the same workforce.

When delegating doesn't work, it can be because the managers haven't successfully done the management end: Setting the goals, identifying the work and transferring the responsibility. Or it can be because the “delegatees” haven't done their part. They haven't gotten it done correctly, or on time. The manager then has to act to set things right.

Either way, the manager's part is the key component.

Sometimes things don't get done right because the work never was fully assigned at all. The manager may be too busy, lacking time to train the staff members. More basically, the manager may not have gotten to know the employees well enough to gauge their capacity to perform the work or grow into it.

Certain characteristics of some managers add to the problem. They earned promotion to their more-responsible positions through superior skills as individual contributors and they retain high standards for how that work is to be done. This can be intimidating or off-putting to those who now work for them.

Such managers may, actually, demand higher-quality results than are really necessary, and their workers know it. It constrains the relationship.

The syndrome often includes a tendency on the managers' part to back away from the difficult new pressures of management. They revert to what they know and enjoy, which is doing their old job. It's easier to do it themselves than try to explain it to those unfamiliar with it, and the managers do a better job, anyway.

Naturally, this doesn't leave them much time to address and perfect the uncomfortable practices of management — including delegating.

Things don't have to be that way.

Delegating is, at its heart, a communication process conducted through management and teamwork. It is based on trust, which comes from effective communication in a cycle led by the manager.

Delegating, done well, contributes mightily to the productivity of the organization. For the individual, the most obvious payoff is in managing workload — and that, in turn, promotes productivity. Higher quality is produced with less time and effort.

You know what evaporates first when people's workloads are too great? Communication. Workers just don't have time to explain; they don't even have time or energy to think about it. So you have a downward spiral of poor communication damaging collaboration, and that makes communication even worse.

Because of all that, you need to manage the workload to earn time to communicate in ways that make it possible to manage the workload.

You have to start somewhere, and my vote is for managers to get their priorities under control by managing their time so they can manage properly. Managers need to create time to:

 • Get to know staffers so they can evaluate skills and potential.

 • Think through work requirements so they can match people and tasks.

 • Devote adequate time to clarifying expectations and train people to meet them.

None of this is impossible. It just requires enough of the right people to crowbar open enough time in their busy days to plan properly and communicate effectively.

For those whose responsibilities include management of people, the people job is the top priority. When they get that right, the work processes will follow. No secret there.

Jim Milliken is a Portland-based consultant and coach who can be reached at jim@millikenproject.com.