Why My Employees Don't Get It? Part Three - Delegation

In my last two blog posts we discussed the first two of the three reasons why your employees typically underperform to your expectations:

1. Poor hiring decisions

2. Poor on-boarding and training

3. Poor delegation

The last item to discuss is delegation. There are two issues to consider here. What should be delegated and how do we delegate effectively? Rather than recreate the wheel, I am pasting in a short article that I received in my Brian Tracy newsletter a few days ago. (I highly recommend signing up for it at www.briantracy.com)

I think the first paragraph of that article is the key. If you want to earn $100/hour (or effectively $200,000/year) you cannot spend your time on tasks that you could outsource at a lower rate. If you have employees on your team earning $20/hour and they have the competence to perform a certain task, you need to delegate that task so you can spend your time on more valuable activities (i.e. tasks worth $100/hr or more).

To be effective you need to identity the activities that only you are skilled and qualified to do and find individuals who can do the rest. Also remember, just because you may be able to do a task better than one of your employees does not mean you should do it.

For example, I worked with a doctor who complained that his employee’s could not do the Medicare billing correctly. Now he has a medical degree from Harvard and could earn up to $300/hr seeing patients. The billing staff had an associate’s degree from a community college and was earning $15/hr. Rather than find the key driver(s) that caused billing errors, the doctor ended up spending $12 hours/week doing billing himself. Effectively losing $285/hr or $3,420/week or $177,840/year.

Now on to Brian Tracy’s article

October 2, 2010

Do What You Do Best; Delegate the Rest

By Brian Tracy

There is a strong likelihood that the things you do best are those for which you would pay another person your hourly rate. Another way of stating this is, "delegate any tasks that can be performed by a person earning less than your hourly rate—or your desired hourly rate."

Delegate to a Person with Demonstrated Competence

Having determined what to delegate, the next step is to select the person to whom you will delegate the task. If you delegate an important task to a person who is incapable of performing adequately, you are setting that individual up for failure while inviting disappointment and frustration on your part. This is not to say the person has to be as capable as you. But he must have sufficient skills and experience to effectively perform the delegated task. Choose carefully. It is in the best interest of the person to whom you are delegating and of course, in your own best interest as well.

Define the Task clearly

be clear as to your intended outcome. What is the end result you want to achieve when the delegated task has been completed? Make every effort to describe this clearly to the person to whom you are delegating the task. Then ask her to repeat her understanding of the assigned task. If her description is not an accurate summary of what you want to accomplish, explain the differences in detail and ask her to again feed back to you her understanding of the assignment. If the two of you do not start out on the same page, there is little likelihood of success.

Set a Deadline

set a clear deadline for completion of the delegated task. Do not be vague. An ambiguous target such as "sometime next week," or "as soon as you can get it done" will not serve either of you well. Without a clearly defined completion date, there will be no sense of urgency, and the job may very well drag on ad infinitum, frustrating you both.

Establish Benchmarks

it will be important for both of you to be able to gauge the progress being made as the delegated task is carried out. Specifically, how will you measure this progress? Reach agreement on the yardstick by which you will make such judgments.

Agree on Consequences

what will be the consequences of the person successfully completing the delegated task? Are these consequences known by the person charged with the responsibility of carrying them out? Are they important to him? Will they serve to motivate him? The consequences do not have to be enormous, but they should be meaningful to him. Otherwise they will have little effect. Their emotional import is what will have the greatest affect.

Put it in Writing

before the delegated assignment is launched, there is one additional important step. Have the entire process described to this point documented in a written agreement. Then, have each of you sign it. Psychologically, this final step transforms your mutual understanding into a commitment.

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