Effectively delegating to others is perhaps the single most powerful high-leverage activity there is.
Transferring responsibiity to other skilled and trained people enables you to give your energies to other high-leverage activities. Delegation means growth, both for individuals and for organizations.
This is something a lot of real estate flippers talk about. The is an immense difference between working on your own flip and hiring contractors to work on your flip.
In the first case, you are limited to how many flips you can do, since you only have so much time. And I know from experience that it takes a lot of time to finish the work needed to get a house ready to sell.
In the second scenario, you hire contractors, allowing you to go find another flip that you can either work on yourself, or once again hire out.
The point is, how effective a flipper someone is will depend on how much they can delegate to others. The same goes for most pursuits. This is why the CEO’s end up making so much money. In essence, they are being compensated for their ability to effectively delegate.
If we delegate to time, we think efficiency. If we delegate to other people, we think effectiveness.
But simply committing to delegating your time is not enough. If you’re not effective at delegating, then you’re just going to compound your problems.
Gofer vs Stewardship Delegation
Gofer delegation means “Go for this, go for that, do this, do that, and tell me when it’s done.”
Covey goes on to explain that gofer delegation resembles one-on-one supervision of methods. It isn’t enough that you just get the job done. Those dishing out gofer delegation expect others to do things exactly as they’re told.
However, since the one delegating is focused on the methods, they become responsible for the results.
Let me give a hypothetical, followed by two scenarios:
You get a job as a server in a restaurant. Your main responsibility, above all else, is to ensure that the guests in your section leave happy and satisfied with their experience.
Scenario 1
Your manager tells you that, “in order to achieve optimal customer satisfaction you are to follow a checklist outlined in your employee handbook”. Everything from how to greet the customers to up charging certain items, it all must be followed. If a scenario comes up that isn’t on your checklist then come find me so that I can tell you how to handle it. On top of that, secret shoppers are brought in to randomly evaluate servers to make sure they’re following all the steps.
Scenario 2
Your manager tells you that, “how you achieve customer satisfaction is up to you.” You are given some guidelines and suggestions, but the only thang that matters is that guest satisfaction averages out to over 85%. The managers are also out on the floor proactively speaking with guests and servers alike, seeing where the most attention is needed. There are no secret shoppers. Instead, guests are encouraged to fill out surveys about their experience, and the servers with the highest ranking for a given period are rewarded.
Scenario 2 is clearly the better scenario to work in. However, most restaurants (at least the ones I’m familiar with) force servers into scenario 1. The problem isn’t just with restaurants. Most jobs are focused on the methods rather than the results.
But by giving workers responsibility for the results is the only way they can take true ownership. Like in scenario 2, that server can get as creative as they want in making sure the guests are satisfied. It gives them the freedom to try new things and see what works.
This is how you get stewardship delegation.
Stewardship delegation is focused on results instead of methods. It gives people a choice of method and makes them responsible for results. It takes more time in the beginning, but it’s time well invested.
So how do we ensure we’re heading down the path of stewardship rather than just creating a gofer? Covey provides 5 principles:
Desired Results - Create a clear, mutual understanding of what needs to be accomplished, focusing on what, not how; results, not methods. Spend time. Be patient. Visualize the desire results, together.
Guidelines - Identify the parameters within which the individual should operate. These should be as few as possible to avoid methods delegation, but should include any formidable restrictions. Point out the potential failure paths, what not to do, but don’t tell them what to do.
Resources - Identify the human, financial, technical, or organizational resources the person can draw on to accomplish the desired results.
Accountability - Set up the standards of performance that will be used in evaluating the results and the specific times when reporting and evaluation will take place.
Consequences - Specify what will happen, both good and bad, as a result of the evaluation. This could include such things as financial rewards, psychic rewards, different job assignments, and natural consequences tied to the overall mission of an organization.
Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people. But it takes time and patience, and it doesn’t preclude the necessity to train and develop people so that their competency can rise to the level of that trust.
This is exactly what killed me in most of my jobs. The main problem was that the restaurants I worked in were a part of a larger company. It wasn’t enough that the managers in my store could see that I was an effective server. If I got 1 bad shopper review I could be fired instantly.
It wasn’t just me, though. At every level, employees were given very clear and strict guidelines of how things need to run. No matter how good anyone employee was, there was never a sense of trust from the corporate office.
I’ll leave you with one final quote from Covey, regarding delegation.
With immature people, you specify fewer desired results and more guidelines, identify more resources, conduct more frequent accountability interviews, and apply more immediate consequences.
With more mature people, you have more challenging desired results, fewer guidelines, less frequent accountability, and less measurable but more discernable criteria.