When leaders and managers spend time thinking about work-tasks before they delegate them to people they gain advantage over those who choose not to invest the time.
They gain advantage for 3 main reasons:
- They improve their ability to match people's talents to work-tasks,
- They improve their ability to communicate about work-tasks, and
- They make fewer delegation errors.
It helps to answer questions like these before tasks are delegated...
- Is it a routine task or a not-routine task?
- Is there a system/process for doing the task?
- Is that system/process in writing?
- Has that system been well communicated to all involved and affected?
If the leader or manager does not understand both those things then the leader is taking a chance – taking a risk – when people are assigned to perform tasks.
To make this point more graphically - It is risky to assume bright people can perform simple tasks.
Another graphic point – When a task is not performed well there are only a few reasons why it is not performed well.
Seeking Simple, let’s create a short list of the reasons why a task is not performed well:
1. The task is impossible, so nobody could do it
2. The task is possible but not clearly defined/described, so people may do the wrong thing
3. The task is possible but the person doesn’t understand it: the person isn’t capable of understanding the way the task was defined/described; the person, for one reason or another, didn’t listen…the communication failed
4. The task is possible & the person understands it but lacks the talent to perform it
5. The task is possible & the person understands it but lacks the knowledge to perform it
6. The task is possible & the person understands it but lacks the skill [practice/experience] to perform it
7. The task is possible & the person is capable of doing it but chooses not to do it: the person chooses to spend the time doing something else; multi-tasking - the person does something deemed more important and runs out of time; the person doesn't like the task; the person is prone to procrastinate; the person doesn’t like the boss or the company - sabotage
Yes – even the short list contains many possibilities. That’s the challenge of managing and leading people. Many things can go wrong according to Murphy they do go wrong.
So - leaders and managers need systems/processes for sorting through the possibilities to determine why things went wrong.