Delegation
Delegating is giving one of your current responsibilities to someone else. Then they have the authority and are responsible for it.
Note that Assigning is different - it’s a normal part of the job.
Here I discuss the case of delegating to your direct report, a.k.a “direct”.
Why?
You’ve been doing a task for some time now, you do it quickly, precisely and with high quality. Why would you delegate it to one of your directs?
- Reduce your own workload, less things to do
- Focus on other activities with higher leverage or value
- Eisenhower Matrix is a method for handling various work items based on their urgency and importance. It recommends to delegate things that are urgent and not important
- Growth of your direct, as they gain another skill
- Knowledge sharing: more people will know about this task, what value it brings and how to execute it, which helps with business continuity in case of absence, a.k.a increasing the bus factor (how many people need to get hit by a bus, so that the project cannot be continued due to lack of knowledge)
- Simple salary math: you’re likely to earn more than your direct, therefore, if you both can execute a task, it is cheaper for the organization if the direct does
- Impact: you might think that your directs also have workload and you need to shield them. If we follow this logic, it would mean that your manager would need to take tasks from you, and so her manager, which would lead to the CEO doing many tasks.
The assumption is that the work “at the top” has higher value and impact than levels below. The CTO’s work has a bigger impact on the company than a single developer, thus, shielding the developer means shielding work of lesser value.
And the most common scenario
You’re a manager working full time with 5 directs.
You manager has given you a new responsibility, which you’ve never done before, and would take considerable time, while work time is finite.
What are your options?
- Overwork — this comes at the expense of your family, friends, hobbies and relaxation. As a continuous solution for “too much work”, this is a huge burden.
- Saying no to the new responsibility — this might be a “career limiting move”, you’re not cooperating and your reaction is viewed by your manager as antagonism.
- Requesting for more people — this is not economically scalable. We cannot grow the organization every time the business grows. And if we’re all busy, it would mean that we cannot grow, e.g., onboard a new client. Being busy cannot prevent the ability to grow.
This also implies that if we reduce business volume, e.g., lose a client, we automatically reduce the number of people. - Delegate the new responsibility to one of your directs — this is problematic because you cannot guide and support the direct, as you’ve never done this before. Who would help them? Your manager?
- Delegate one of your other bigger responsibilities to one of the directs, so you’d have time for the new one — the problem is that it would be too big for them: responsibilities are always bigger for levels below (this is not a derogatory term, merely visualizing the org chart) — if a certain responsibility is “medium” size for you, it would be “large” size for your direct.
- Delegate several small responsibilities to several directs — bingo!
For each direct, the new responsibility is quite big, and in this case your “small” size would be a “medium” for them.
To Whom?
Let’s look at considerations for choosing to whom to delegate, from strong to weak:
Delegate a responsibility to a direct whose growth objectives match it, as a preparation for their next role (remember, delegation is not about ordinary work responsibilities).
Use as an opportunity to grant more responsibility to one of the directs who is performing very well and need more, as a recognition or reward.
It could also be something that you know the direct is passionate about and therefore will be motivated to do.
Another option is to consider competence — who does this type of work the best, so they enjoy doing it, or a direct who’d like to become good at this.
The direct with the lowest workload, in order to balance the load.
Ask for a volunteer, who may be driven by some internal motivation.
Randomly pick.
“/dev/null” — in some cases it’s possible to delegate a task to the void, meaning, stop doing it altogether and see whether there are any consequences. This obviously needs to be done with care and can normally be done only at the lowest level of the org chart, more about this later on.
How?
Delegating doesn’t mean someone simply takes over and you forget about it. You still need to invest in the beginning. There are three parts:
Let go
Come to terms with the fact that they will do it worse than you in the beginning. How well did you do this task when you just started?
Maybe take a moment to reflect on your first driving lesson.
Convincing yourself that “it’s faster if I just do it” or “I do it better” is shortsighted and doesn’t serve any of the benefits mentioned above.
Get buy-in
On 1:1 with the direct, say “I’d like your help”. Don’t ask for a favor, you will not “owe them” for it. Then describe the topic and explain why you chose them.
We want to get a tentative acceptance at this stage, before giving more details. “Would you please do X?”
As with every question we ask a direct, we honor the response (otherwise don’t ask, demand).
If they start objecting, this is actually good, as all salespeople know, as it surfaces their concerns and then you can address them:
You can ask “And if I solve this for you, is it ok?” as many times as needed, in order to arrive to a ‘yes’.
Now share the details after the acceptance. The direct now listens as they must understand and follow. Them taking notes is a strong sign they really accepted. While explaining the details, also explain how you alone or you both would resolve the mentioned objections and concerns.
Explain quality standards (how we know it succeeded) and target date.
Reassure them that they would have your support.
If we share all details before, these are likely to be used as ideas of why they cannot perform this.
In case the direct says they are too busy, and they have no one to delegate to , you could ask them to create a list of all of their tasks and recommend what to stop doing, then you, the manager, decide for them what they stop doing, and you’re accountable, you’re taking the risk. This is the “dev/null” mentioned above, to be used on the “lowest level”.
In case you’re worried, this is not manipulating — it’s for the benefit of the organization, not for personal benefit, and again, we respect their answer if they refuse.
Why not simply demand?
When you rent a car for 4 days, do you fill it up with the most expensive gasoline and oil you can find? Probably not. And why? Because it’s not yours, you have no connection to the car after these 4 days.
Here we do the opposite — we ask, give the full reasoning about the responsibility, its value and for whom.
It’s important that they understand the goal. In some cases the way to achieve it is prescribed, e.g., due to compliance, and in many other cases there can be more than one way to go about it. So, communicate the expected outcome. It doesn’t have to be your way, and what matters is the result.
This way they can “own it” and do their best work, as it addresses the 3 main motivational forces: purpose, autonomy and mastery.
Check-in
Pre-determine the check-in frequency and what you will look at in order to prevent surprise, frustration, feeling of micro-management or lack of trust, when you ask to see their progress.
The check-ins could be every fixed days, or more often in the beginning where there is less knowledge, or close to the end, when the target date is near.
In these check-ins, revise the work product and give positive and negative feedback.
Be available for help on demand. This doesn’t need to be immediate, it rather means that you need to unblock them before the next check-in.
Example
Lisa is managing 3 managers.
Her manager requested her to take over organizing meetups, which he used to be responsible for until now. He explained the details, and it was clear that it was not a short or simple task like approving expenses.
Lisa accepted, knowing that she needed to delegate something to her directs.
She looked at her current responsibilities and decided to delegate the responsibility for their internal architecture guild. She chose a direct who was an engineering manager who wanted to broaden his technical skills as well as strengthen his organizational skills.
In their 1:1, it went like this:
Lisa: “I’d like your help on something.״
Michael: “Sure, how can I help?”
Lisa: “We have the internal architecture guild, which is a major driver of cross-functional initiatives to reduce technical risk in the company, and I cannot be responsible for it any more, as I take over other duties.
I’d like you to be responsible for it from now on.
It would help you remain close to technical topics, broaden your knowledge, and will force you to exercise and improve organizational skills. Would you please take over?”
Michael: “Hmmm… I’d love to and I see the benefits, but I am so busy, I am not sure I can squeeze it in.”
Lisa: “And if I can find a way to remove other things from you, so there is no need to squeeze it in, would that be ok?”
Michael: “In this case, yes, I’m juts not sure what it entails.”
Lisa: “Thank you Michael. As I’ve been doing this for quite some time, I will support you. What you need to do is make sure guild members bring up topics for the next week’s meeting, and they are added to the shared document. You’d also facilitate the meeting and capture action items in the form of who-does-what-by-when.”
Michael: “Wait, wait, I’m taking notes.”
Lisa: “Let’s do a 15 minutes check-in every week, one day before the meeting, to go over the shared document and the previous action items. I will schedule this. Once you feel it’s not necessary, we stop this recurring meeting, and you can still always reach out to me when needed.”
Michael: “Got it.”
Lisa: “And how do you know it’s going well? There are topics to discuss in the meeting, action items are captured and being followed up on the next one. Also, the meeting room is ready on time and remote people can easily participate.
For making time for this new responsibility, you could take time to think about it and practice delegation or I could share my ideas.”
Michael: “This is a bit too much right now for me to think… what is your idea?”
Lisa: “The preparation and facilitation of your team meetings, such as the daily standup and retrospective, could be done by others in your team, what do you think?”
Michael: “Actually yes, I can ask Amit to take over, as he is interested in improving his public speaking.”
Lisa: “Great, thank you Michael. Let me know whenever you need support.”
Non-binary delegation
There are cases where it’s not about a responsibility that is transferred, rather about ongoing work decisions. This is not delegation per se.
For example, who decides whether a team member can take a day off? Who decides if we hire another person? Only the manager? Would she request input from team members and then decide? Should she let the team decide? Anything in between?
These are not a binary “either manager or direct”, rather a wider range of options, or levels.
Delegation poker is used to clarify the level of delegation between a manager and direct about a specific topic in order to ease future decision making, and includes 7 levels (given from the manager’s perspective):
- Tell: I will tell them
- Sell: I will try and sell it to them
- Consult: I will consult and then decide
- Agree: We will agree together
- Advise: I will advise but they decide
- Inquire: I will inquire after they decide
- Delegate: I will fully delegate
Resources
Manager Tools
The Effective Manager
Start with Why
Drive
Management 3.0
