Time Management by Chris Croft

Delegating

Delegating can be the best way of all to get more done. The leverage can be massive. So far we’ve been saving 10% here and there, but with this you could get ten times as much done!

  And if you don’t delegate you’ll be bogged down with trivia and never get anywhere significant. You won’t have time to spend in box 3 as your time will be filled with box 2s.  

Doing everything yourself will not make you popular either. Good delegation will allow your team to have ownership, to learn and grow, and get job satisfaction. Otherwise they’ll feel undermined and over-smothered by interference.

False reasons for not delegating

• It’s too important to give to anyone else
• I haven’t got time to explain it to them
• I haven’t got time to train them how to do it
• They’re too busy already
• It’s not a very nice job to give them
• They won’t like being given it
• It might go wrong
• I want the glory of having done it
• It’s fun to do because it’s easy, it’s what I used to do, and I’m good at it.
• I’m the best at it.

  I’m feeling ill writing these. I’m not going to tell you why they are false reasons – you already know!

Ideas to help you delegate

• Delegate everything that’s routine. It’s a waste of you to do routine work
• Make it routine if possible – set up a system that anyone can be given to follow.
• Train / coach them to cope with more challenging tasks
• List everything you do and look at each task – who could you give this one to?
• Give jobs to the person who will find it challenging rather than the person who can do it easily and will be bored by it
• Think about how each person who works for you can be given a challenge
• Delegate parts of a job if not the whole
• Think of your job as being to build a team that can do everything that you do
• You’ll get the praise for everything that your team achieves
• Realise that you are stuck in your job until you can delegate it all
• Who would do the tasks if you were away for 3 months? – give it to them anyway
• If they can do it 70% as well as you, or better, delegate it to them.
• If the captain of the ship finds himself stoking the boiler he’s failed, even if he has got the biggest muscles.