The purpose of this standard procedure is to
describe the process and methods for delegating authority. The question of whether to delegate or not is
often considered a personal choice on the part of many managers. In reality,
there is no choice. The Department
Managers, Lead person cannot be successful in managing for the lowest possible
cost, highest possible productivity, and maximized profit for Your Company,
without delegation of authority and sharing responsibility to perform, along
with structuring the accountability to perform through performance evaluations. A basic principle of organizational
management states that “sufficient authority shall be delegated to a manager to
take the necessary action or actions to accomplish the Company’s objectives,”
such as “ Sales Volumes, Inventories, Productivity, Project Completion within
budget estimates, with client satisfaction.
Delegation of authority is one of the most frequently violated
principles of organization. The essence
of the principle is that when an employee receives an assignment, he/she should
automatically be granted the power of authority to carry the assignment to its completion. To ensure the effectiveness for the process
of delegation, it is very important that the employee have one and only one “boss”
giving directions and delegating. The
employee should be given a direct explanation of who he/she is responsible to
for the assignment. If this is not done, conflicting orders will result in
confusion and loss of productivity and profitability.
A. Scope
of assignment.
B. Specific
results to achieve.
C. Time
schedule for completion.
D. Standard
for successful performance measurement.
Delegate the jobs alternating to each team. (as
long as the team can maintain schedule).
Train and develop your Operations, Assembly and Manufacturing Teams, to
work together as an entity to accomplish the Pro-Active management of the
company goals, with controls by the Administrative departments. The most effective way to increase your span
of authority (i.e. manage more responsibility, or take on more business), or to
increase your discretionary time, is to have someone trained to fill some or
all of your responsibilities when it becomes
necessary. Every attempt must be made to
share responsibility gradually. Some positions simply require a passing of time
for responsibility to grow naturally. Avoid
transferring responsibilities overnight. Be conscious of the amount of time
that is needed to master an area of responsibility. Delegate in advance. Do not wait until a project, task or
responsibility becomes a problem before delegating. Every attempt must be made to delegate the
task/project/assignment or responsibility as a whole. Whenever possible delegate the entire project
and/or functional responsibility to one responsible lead person, rather than
assigning parts to many individuals.delegation must be done to achieve specific
results.Consciously attempt to avoid listing your own method & style for
the project scope, or function, rather attempt to detail the specific results
required for the successful completion of assignments and/or function
responsibility. All functional
departments within the organization must be informed of the shared
responsibility and authority delegation levels within the organization. This will ensure the full cooperation of all
the personnel within the organization. Employees will
understand the shared
responsibility, the authority delegated, and the accountability established
within the organization. Let the
managers manage. Follow up to determine
the results achieved giving intermittent performance feedback whenever possible
and appropriate.
Develop and detail all results expected, the
time frame, and any limits on authority to be exercised and used. To avoid miscommunication, put into writing
the results expected and any time frame agreed upon. Allow the projects, tasks, and
responsibilities shared to be performed according to the style of the lead
person they are delegated to, within established Company policy and standard
procedures, and hold them accountable for the results expected. The successful lead persons and managers will
effectively delegate. A successful business will be managed by managers who are
not afraid to delegate. The manager who fails to delegate will be doomed to
being “MANAGED BY ACTIVITIES” rather than being a “MANAGER OF ACTIVITIES”. DELEGATION IS NOT ABDICATION !! Authority can be delegated and responsibility
shared, however the ultimate responsibility to see that the task is completed
cannot be delegated. FOLLOW THROUGH WITH PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS!! To determine what responsibilities should be
shared, perform the following analysis.
List all actions or tasks that you perform and
determine which tasks should be appropriately delegated to subordinate
functions and subordinate personnel. Utilize
the attached Daily Time Log for a period of time to determine what
responsibility can be shared and which tasks should be delegated. When delegating a task and/or sharing a
responsibility to a subordinate function ask:
A.
What level of authority
is required?
B.
Which subordinate
function is closest to the situation?
C.
Does the subordinate
have the necessary skill & experience to assume the responsibility, or is
additional training or coaching required?
D.
How much coaching time
will be required?
E.
Is the task or responsibility
clearly defined?
F.
How can the
accountability be evaluated?
Your
task and/or responsibility list should be reduced by at least 50%. Perform the above analysis at least annually,
and more often if you find insufficient time to effectively manage your
functional responsibility.
|
A: TASKS THAT MAY NOT BE
DELEGATED |
B: TASKS THAT MAY BE
DELEGATED |
C: TASKS THAT MUST BE DELEGATED |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Time of Day |
Task or Activity |
Interruption |
Time Lost |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Interruption Code Definitions:
1. ________________________________
4. ___________________________
2. ________________________________
5. ___________________________
3. ________________________________
6. ___________________________
4.0 WHO’S GOT THE MONKEY?
How lack of delegation &
established accountability keeps the monkey on your back and Techniques for
taking the monkey off your back. The
effectiveness of decision authority not delegated to the appropriate level. This analogy underscores the value of
assigning, delegating and controlling - HOW MANY MONKEY’S DO Y0U HAVE?
In any
organization, the manager’s, bosses, peers and subordinates, in return for
their active support, impose some requirements, just as the Manager imposes
some requirements upon them when they are drawing upon his or her support. These demands constitute so much of the
Manager’s time that successful leadership hinges on an ability to control this
“monkey on the back” effectively. Mr.
Oncken is Chairman of the Board of the William Oncken Company of Texas, Inc., a
management consulting firm. Mr. Wass is
President of the Company.
Why is it that
managers are typically running out of time while their subordinates are
typically running out of work? In this
article, we shall explore the meaning of management time as it relates to the
interaction between managers and their bosses, their own peers and their
subordinates. Specifically, we shall
deal with three different kinds of management time:
Boss-Imposes-Time: To
accomplish those activities which the boss requires and which the manager
cannot disregard without direct and swift penalty.
System-Imposed-Time: To
accommodate those requests to the manager for active support from his or her
peers. This assistance must also be
provided lest there be penalties, though not always direct or swift.
Self-Imposed-Time: To do
those things which the manager originates or agrees to do. A certain portion of this kind of time,
however, will be taken by subordinates and is called
“subordinate-imposed-time.” The remaining
portion will be his or her own and is
called “discretionary time.”
Self-imposed time is not subject to penalty since neither the boss nor
the system can discipline the manager for not doing what they did not know the
manager had intended to do in the first place.
The management
of time necessitates that management get control over the timing and content of
what they do. Since what the bosses and
system impose on them are backed up by penalty, managers cannot tamper with
those requirements. Thus their
self-imposed time becomes their major area of concern.
The manager’s
strategy is therefore to increase the “discretionary” component of their
self-imposed activities. Most managers
spend much more subordinate-imposed time than they even faintly realize. Hence we shall use a monkey-on-the-back
analogy to examine how subordinate-imposed-time comes into being and what the
superior can do about it.
Let us imagine
that a manager is walking down the hall and he notices one of his subordinates,
Jones, coming up the hallway. When they
are abreast of one another, Jones greets the manager with “Good Morning. By the way, we’ve got a problem. You see....”
As Jones continues, the manager recognizes in this problem the same two
characteristics common to all the problems his subordinates gratuitously bring
to his attention. Namely, the manager
knows (a) enough to get involved, but (b) not enough to make the on-the-spot
decision expected of him. Eventually,
the manager says “So glad you brought this up.
I’m in a rush right now.
Meanwhile, let me think about it and I’ll let you know.” Then he and Jones part Company.
Let us analyze
what just happened. Before the two of
them met, on whose back was the “monkey”?
The subordinates. After they
parted, on whose back was the “monkey”?
The managers. Subordinate-imposed
time begins the moment a monkey successfully executes a leap from the back of
the subordinate to the back of his or her superior and does not end until the
monkey is returned to its proper owner for care and feeding.
In accepting the
monkey, the manager has voluntarily assumed a position subordinate to his
subordinate. That is, he allowed Jones
to make him subordinate by doing two things a subordinate is generally expected
to do for his boss - the manager accepted a responsibility from his
subordinate, and the manager promised Jones a progress report.
The subordinate,
to make sure the manager does not miss the point, will later stick his or her
head in the manager’s office and cheerily query “How’s it coming?” (This is called “supervision.”)
Or let us
imagine again, in concluding a working conference with another subordinate,
Johnson, the manager’s parting words are “Fine. Send me a memo on that.”
Let us analyze
this one. The monkey is now on the
subordinate’s back because the next move is his, but is poised for a leap. Watch that monkey! Johnson dutifully writes the requested memo
and drops it in his out basket. Shortly
thereafter, the manager plucks the requested memo from his or her in basket or
from his or her desk and reads it. Whose
move is it now? The Manager’s. If he or she does not make a move soon, the manager
will get a follow-up memo from the subordinate (another form of the subordinate
supervising the manager instead of the manager supervising the
subordinate). The longer the manager
delays, the more frustrated the subordinate will become (he or she will be
“spinning their wheels”) and the more guilty the manager will feel and (his or
her backlog of subordinate-imposed time will be mounting).
Or suppose once
again that at a meeting with a third subordinate, Smith, the manager agrees to
provide all the necessary backing for a sales plan proposal he as just asked
Smith to develop. The manager’s parting
words to Smith are “Just let me know how I can help.”
Now let us
analyze this one. Here the monkey is
initially on the subordinate’s back. But
for how long? Smith realizes that she
cannot let the manager “know” until her proposal has the manager’s
approval. And from experience, she
realizes that her proposal will likely be sitting in the managers briefcase or
on his desk for weeks for him to get to it.
Who’s really got the monkey? Who
will be checking up on whom? Wheel
spinning and bottlenecking are on their way up again.
A fourth
subordinate, Reed, has just been hired in order to launch and eventually manage
a newly created business venture. The manager has said that they should get
together soon to hammer out a set of objectives for the new job, and that “I
will draw up an initial draft for discussion with you.”
Let us analyze
this one too. The subordinate has the
new job (by hiring him or her) and the full responsibility (by formal
delegation), but the manager has the next move.
Until he makes it, he will have the monkey and the subordinate will be
immobilized.
Why does it all
happen? Because in each instance the
manager and the subordinate assume at the outset, wittingly or unwittingly,
that the matter under consideration is a joint problem. The monkey in each case begins its career
astride both their backs. All it has to
do now is move the wrong leg, and—Presto!-- the subordinate deftly
disappears. The manager is thus left
with another acquisition to his menagerie.
Of course, monkeys can be trained not to move the wrong leg. But it is easier to prevent them from
straddling backs in the first place.
To make what
follows more credible, let us suppose that these same four subordinates are so
thoughtful and considerate of the superior’s time that they are at pains to
allow no more than three monkeys to leap
from each of their backs to his in any one day.
In a five day week, the manager will have picked up 60 screaming monkeys—far
to many to do anything about individually.
So he spends the subordinate-imposed time juggling his “priorities.”
Late Friday
afternoon, the manager is in his office with the door closed for privacy in
order to contemplate the situation, while his subordinates are waiting outside
to get a last chance before the weekend to remind him that he will have to
“fish or cut bait”. Imagine they are
saying to each other about the manager as they wait: “What a bottleneck. He just can’t make up his mind. How anyone got that high or became that
successful without being able to make a decision we’ll never know.”
Worst of all,
the reason the manager cannot make any of these “next moves” is that his time
is almost entirely eaten up in meeting his own boss-imposed or customer-imposed
and system-imposed requirements. To get control
of these, he needs discretionary time that is in turn denied him when he is
preoccupied with all these monkeys. The
manager is caught in a vicious circle.
But time is
a-wasting (an understatement). The
manager calls his secretary on the intercom and instructs her to tell his
subordinates that he will be unavailable to see them until Monday morning. At
He returns
bright and early the next day only to see, on the nearest green of the golf
course across from his office window, a foursome. Guess who?
That does
it. He now knows who is really working
for whom. Moreover, he now sees that if
he actually accomplishes during this weekend what he came to accomplish, his
subordinates’ morale will go up so sharply that they will each raise the limit
on the number of monkeys they will let jump from their backs to his. In short, he now sees with the clarity of a
revelation on a mountain top, that the more he gets caught up, the more he will
fall behind.
He leaves the
office with the speed of a person running from a plague. His plan?
To get caught up on something else he hasn’t had time for in years: a
weekend with his family. (One of the
many varieties of discretionary time.)
Sunday night he enjoys ten
hours of sweet, untroubled slumber because he has clear-cut plans for
Monday. He is going to get rid of his
subordinate-imposed time. In exchange,
he will get an equal amount of discretionary time, part of which he will spend
with his subordinates to see that they learn the difficult but rewarding
managerial art called “The Care and Feeding of Monkeys.”
The manager will
also have plenty of discretionary time left over for getting control of the
timing and content not only of his boss/customer-imposed time but of his
system-imposed time as well. All of this
may take many months, but compared with the way things have been, the rewards
will be enormous. His ultimate objective
is to manage his management time.
The manager
returns to the office Monday morning just late enough to permit his four
subordinates to collect in his outer office waiting to see him about their
monkeys. He calls them in, one by one. The purpose of each interview is to take a
monkey, place it on the desk between them, and figure out together how the next
move might conceivably be the subordinate’s.
For certain monkeys, this will take some doing. The subordinate’s next move may be so elusive
that the manager may decide, just for now, to merely let the monkey sleep on
the subordinate’s back overnight and have him or her return with it at an
appointed time the next morning to continue the joint quest for a more
substantive move by the subordinate. (Monkeys
sleep just as soundly overnight on subordinate’s backs as on superiors’.)
As each
subordinate leaves the office, the manager is rewarded by the sight of a monkey
leaving his office on the subordinate’s back.
For the next 24 hours, the subordinate will not be waiting for the
manager; instead, the manager will be waiting for the subordinate.
Later, as if to
remind himself that there is no law against engaging in a constructive exercise
in the interim, the manager strolls by the subordinates office, sticks his head
in the door, and cheerily asks “How’s it coming? (This time is discretionary for the manager
and boss-imposed for the subordinate.)
When the subordinate (with the monkey on his or her back) and the
manager meet at the appointed hour the next day, the manager explains the
ground rules in words to this effect.
“At no time
while I am helping you with this or any other problem will your problem become
my problem. The instant your problem
becomes mine, you will no longer have a problem. I cannot help a person who does not have a
problem.”
“When this meeting is
over, the problem will leave this office exactly the way it came in—on your
back. You may ask my help at an
appointed time and we will make a joint determination of what the next move will
be and who will make it.”
“In those rare
instances where the next move turns out to be mine, you and I will determine it
together. I will not make any move
alone.”
The manager
follows this same line of thought with each subordinate until about
What we have
been driving at in this monkey-on-the-back analogy is to transfer initiative
from superior to subordinate and keep it there.
We have tried to highlight a truism that is as obvious as it is
subtle. Namely, before developing initiative
in subordinates, the manager must see to it that they have the initiative. Once he takes it back, they will no longer
have it and the discretionary time can be kissed good-bye. It will all revert to subordinate imposed
time.
Nor can both
manager and subordinate effectively have the same initiative at the same
time. The opener, “Boss, we’ve got a
problem,” implies this duality and represents, as noted earlier, a monkey
astride two backs, which is a very bad way to start a monkey on its career.
Let us,
therefore, take a few moments to examine what we prefer to call “The Anatomy of
Managerial Initiative.” There are five
degrees of initiative that the manager can exercise in relation to the boss and
the system.
1. WAIT until told (lowest initiative);
2. ASK what to do;
3. RECOMMEND, then take resulting action;
4. ACT, but advise at once; and
5. ACT on own, then routinely report (highest initiative).
Clearly, the
manager should be professional enough not to indulge in initiatives #1 and #2
in relation to the boss or to the system.
A manager who uses initiative #1 has no control over either the timing
or content of boss-imposed time, and thereby forfeits any right to complain
about what he or she is told to do or when.
The manager who uses initiative #2 has control over the timing but not
over content. Initiatives #3, #4, and #5
leave the manager in control of both, with the greatest control being at level
#5.
The manager’s
job in relation to subordinates’ initiatives, is twofold; first, to outlaw the
use of initiatives #1 and #2, thus
giving subordinates no choice but to learn and master “Completed Staff
Work”; then, to see that for each problem leaving the
office there is an agreed-upon level of initiative assigned to it, in addition
to the agreed-upon time and place of the next scheduled meeting for managers
and subordinates. The latter should be
duly noted on the manager’s appointment calendar.
In order to
further clarify our analogy between the monkey-on-the-back and the well known
processes of assigning and controlling, we shall refer briefly to the manager’s
appointment schedule, which calls for five hard and fast rules governing the
“Care and Feeding of Monkeys.”
(Violations of these rules will cost discretionary time.):
Monkeys should
be fed or shot. Otherwise, they will
starve to death and the manager will waste valuable time on postmortems or
attempted resurrections.
The monkey population
should be kept below the maximum number the manager has time to feed, but no
more. It shouldn’t take more than 5 to
15 minutes to feed a properly prepared monkey.
Monkeys should
be fed by appointment only. The manager
should not have to be hunting down starving monkeys and feeding them on a
catch-as-catch-can basis.
Monkeys should be fed
face to face or by telephone, but never by mail. (If by mail, the next move will be the
manager’s - REMEMBER?) Documentation may add to the feeding process,
but it cannot take the place of feeding.
Every monkey should
have an assigned “next feeding time” and “degree of initiative.” These may be revised at any time by mutual
consent, but never allowed to become vague or indefinite. Otherwise, the monkey will either starve to
death or wind up on the manager’s back.
“Get control
over the timing and content of what you do” is appropriate advice for managing
management time. The first order of
business is for the manager to enlarge his or her discretionary time by
eliminating subordinate-imposed time.
The second is for the manager to use a portion of this new found discretionary
time to see to it that each subordinate possesses the initiative without which
he or she cannot exercise initiative, and then follow-up that this initiative
is in fact taken.
The third is for
the manager to use another portion of the increase in discretionary time to obtain and retain control of timing
and content of the boss/customer-imposed and system-imposed time.
The result is
that the manager’s leverage will increase. He or she, regains value of each
hour spent in managing management time to multiply without theoretical limit.
I challenge you
to make changes , follow through with directives, and remove the monkey.
866-385-1900 Office
713-983-7904 Fax