Management Magic 101- How to Delegate Well

by: stacey - January 2nd, 2012   Filed under: Leadership, Management Add Comment

Delegating is hard for some people.  I am one of those people (which is, I know, not a great quality in a project manager).  The hard part for some people is a loss of control.  For me, it was always a fear that they won’t do the task right.  It took me some time to figure out that often when the person I delegated to didn’t meet my expectations, it was because I failed to communicate what was needed.

If you want to delegate well, don’t set your delegatee up for failure.  Set expectations.  Define the task completely.  What is the expected deliverable?  What is the due date? What is the budget?  What resources are available to help?  Supply a template, example, or even a simple sketch to help identify your goal.

If you don’t explain what you want, how you want it, and when you want it by, then don’t expect what you asked for to be delivered.  Every PM knows this.  Put it to use in your every day life.

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How Easily Are You Replaced?

by: stacey - December 26th, 2011   Filed under: Leadership, Planning Add Comment

How easy would it be for your company if you never showed up to work again? This may sound like a silly question. Setting a goal for yourself to be easily replaced sounds like a quick ticket to the street. How about a quick ticket to the executive suite instead?

Consider this question: If you have made yourself indispensible to your company, in the position you are in right now, how can you ever be promoted?

There are two ways to handle this. The first (and the more commonly taken road) is to document what you do each day and cross-train others to your job if possible. This is a good first step. If you were hit by a bus tomorrow, the company would be covered, which is another good reason to do this, and a good reason for your company to support you doing this.

The second way to do this is to eliminate your job. That’s right, I said eliminate it. Most jobs involve a large number of repetitive tasks. Find better, smarter ways of doing what you do every day. Work towards finding a way to streamline things so that you and the people involved in the workflows that you are involved in have to do less to accomplish what they do today.

If you can’t automate, at least simplify. Document what you do with decision-making flowcharts and procedures. Between automation and documentation, you should be able to reduce your own workload. Now you can go to your boss, point out what you’ve done to make things easier, and ask for more responsibilities. While you’re at it, work your way towards being allowed to delegate the most simple of the processes you do each day. By simplifying, delegating and eliminating the lowest 20% of your work constantly, you should be picking up a new 20% that has more challenges and responsibilities all the time.

If you don’t like your new tasks, accept the challenge of making them so simple that you can automate or delegate those, too. Keep working your way upward through responsibilities. Pretty soon, you will get noticed by those higher than you in the company food chain.

You might even get promoted… and whether or not they can replace you will never come up when they consider promoting you.

POSTED BY Stacey Douglas

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Never Be Afraid to Challenge

by: stacey - December 23rd, 2011   Filed under: Leadership Add Comment

Your company probably has a healthy share of rules and bureaucracy. Most do. All of it is there for a reason, to be sure. Some of those reasons, though, may not be good ones. Procedures have a way of lagging behind business needs and business environment. Sometimes things change and a rule that used to be very important to protect business integrity no longer applies. Sometimes a rule that used to be all about protecting the business now actually endangers it.

Here’s some advice: if you don’t know why things are the way they are, ask questions. If you don’t agree with the answers you receive, don’t be afraid to challenge the policy. Challenge it until you either get a good answer or get the changes needed for the business.

The rules that make up your company’s policies were written by and are owned by employees of your company, employees just like you. If confronted with good reasons and solid evidence why the rules should be different than they are, it is very possible that whoever is responsible for making that policy will rewrite and improve it. It’s possible that there may not even be an owner anymore; sometimes “We’ve always done it this way” is a terrible enemy. Even if you don’t get the change you seek, you may get it waived in certain cases where it no longer makes sense and get your work through faster. The change to the rules that you spark may improve the company overall.

What if you find out that the rule had a good point? Did you waste your time bucking against bureaucracy? Not at all. The explanation of the rule will teach you more about the business. It may explain processes in a context that you’ve never considered. They may teach you something about the company and about business that explains why the rules are the way they are. The change in your work as a result of this new understanding will be worth the effort.

Never be afraid to challenge. One way or another, you have everything to gain.

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