Your greatest problem as a manager is not the weight of responsibility you bear. That is, of course, a very real burden. But the reason it is not your biggest concern is precisely that there is nothing you can do about it.
Except make it easier to discharge. You do that by frankly addressing the issue that is, in fact, a manager’s greatest problem: time. Unlike responsibility, you can’t be given more time in a day than is already there. But you can leverage it. And you do that by delegating authority.
When owners give you responsibility, it is all yours, all the time. It is indivisible and fixed in place – you can’t pass it along.
When they give you authority, though, you can. Moreover, you do that without losing it, yourself.
After all, authority derives its force from its source. Your own authority is given you, ultimately, by owners. When you use it, everyone knows where it came from, and there is no question about its validity.
The same applies when you delegate it. Its authenticity, when it is used by the juniors to whom you have given it, is defined and understood in terms of its origin in you, representing as you do the legitimate source from which it emanates.
And that source is inextinguishable. You reduce it not one bit by allocating it intelligently. You can award large measures of it to competent staff members for application to important projects. Or, you can assign carefully calibrated amounts to others to measure and develop their abilities.
You can even give employees the authority to make decisions. But that authority only traces its ancestry back to ownership – it doesn’t displace it.
We will look at what that means for delegating decisions, tomorrow. Please do stop in.
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Today’s tip: Speaking of ownership, Carl Icahn is a great supporter of the idea that boards of public companies should do a better job of representing their interests, and that owners should be given more means for ensuring that they do. Please see what he has to say about Jack Welch‘s (who, while at GE, combined the CEO and Chairman positions in his own person) defense of boards, and about a potential remedy for shareholders.
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Technorati Tags: manager, responsibility, authority, owner, delegate, staff, project, employee, decision, ownership, Carl Icahn, Jack Welch, GE, CEO, Chairman, shareholder
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Congratulations! This post was selected as one of the five best business blog posts of the week in my Three Star Leadership Midweek Review of the Business Blogs.
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Wally Bock
Delegation is essential to keep managers sane, I think. However there is a fine line between letting the delegatee know you trust them while still holding them accountable, and isn’t that where capable leadership comes in? It’s important to delegate carefully, because the buck gets passed up ranks when things go awry, but you’re spot on in testing the waters incrementally before delegating out large tasks.
Hello Hayli,
There’s another superb reason for encouraging delegation – keeping managers sane!
Trusting, holding accountable – there’s one fine line. Another is assisting and micro-managing.
That’s a key thing, I’ve found, about delegation – making sure all parties involved maintain a realistic appreciation of how it works in light of the fact that responsibility is not among those things delegated.
Thanks again for some illuminating insight, here, and, of course, for your visit!
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