by Ken Vincent, Featured Contributor
I HAVE BEEN READING a translated version of a book written by a Senior Centurion in Cesar’s army of some 1600 years ago. One of the things he laments about is the problems of delegation to his centurions. Ah, nothing has changed in 1600 years except the titles.
Delegation has never been easy and it still isn’t. That often causes the inevitable mistake of not delegating at all, or too little. Why is it so hard?
Well, for starters the person, or team, you are delegating something to must be trained to handle that assignment. Then there is the question of follow up. Too much is micro-managing and too little risks loss of control in the results and timing.
So, how much follow up is the right amount? Well, there isn’t a pat answer to that. It depends on the people involved and the assignment. Since that is a moving target the question becomes rather difficult to answer.
The best a manager can hope for is to keep a finger on the pulse and adjust accordingly. A little more supervision here, a little less there, and that takes a very experienced and agile manager.
Do you have some tricks to successful delegation that others can learn from?
I think part of the answer on follow-up is to set control points at various important checkpoints in the process so that, if the project is an important one and is in trouble, the manager can still step in and guide the process so that the target date is met and the employee can learn from the experience. Management control at its fundamental level.