Delegation Isn’t Management but a Part of It
A business colleague of mine and I started on a discussion about management delegation the other day. We discussed a class of manager that exits who successfully delegates all possible personal accountability away to their subordinates. We then discussed the varying methods that some will use to ensure that if anything goes wrong the delegated party(s) will take the fall for it. We had a few laughs about how some of managers we have met, many senior executives, who would go about putting themselves into this position, and the poor people who were held accountable. We then went on to discuss how these types of managers appear to know very little about their area of responsibility. I thought a portion of that discussion would make a good topic.
Playing off my first post, management paradox, I thought it was worth a minute or two to discuss the main issue in managerial delegation as we see it today. As managers we are trained to delegate in order to get more done. We are supposed to use delegation as a tool to become more productive, more efficient. While this is the case for most delegations there is an apparent fatal flaw in the system that we witness among managers. Delegation is a management tool that needs to be managed, not a management methodology in itself.
Now this is an important statement that in my experience isn’t pondered enough by managers. Delegating a task, responsibility, or accountability is an essential part of a manager’s role, but that role does not end at the point of delegation. It ends at the delegated items completion.
As a subordinate working for various organizations I cannot count the number of times I have had a manager delegate a task to me and only show up to find out the tasks status. In the case of delegated accountability they only showed their head to point the finger or reemphasis things were not going as they should. Early in my management career I have been guilty of doing this myself. Then, at some point, I realized that as a manager I am responsible for the success and failures of those who work for me. It appeared to me that the more I share in the accountability as a manager the more of a leader I become.
The point that I’m trying to cover here is that as a manager we are responsible for managing the delegation process and all that it includes. It is our responsibility. We as managers need to be held accountable for whether or not the delegate has the proper time, resources, and abilities to complete the delegated assignment(s). Our subordinates and their success is our success, their failure, our failure. We are responsible to ensure that the right people are in the right positions, with the right resources, and are allocated the proper amount of time.
Now, I know there are a million variables that could potentially impact a manager’s situation such as inadequate resources, staff, and time. Those are our issues to face. We as managers are to guide the business’s outcomes to successful completion. Not spend the time finding ways to delegate away our accountability.