“Please let others know not to make this mistake” – that is what one of our clients, Ted, the owner of a mid-sized trucking company said to me regarding the predicament he had gotten himself into.
What was his dilemma?
Ted wanted to ease into semi-retirement, but he did not want to sell his company. He had spent the last 25 years growing and diversifying it. During this time, he had grown the business from a one-person enterprise into a 30-tractor trailer operation, and along the way he added logistics and warehousing services.
The combination of trucking, logistics, and warehousing enabled his company to become a significant player in the transportation industry in his metropolitan area. But each department needed strong supervision and leadership.
Since he did not want to sell his enterprise yet, but still wanted to significantly decrease his workload, he had hired three managers to take over and run each area.
The Troubles Begin
This is where his troubles began.
When he hired the managers, he basically said to each of them, the department is all yours, and don’t bother me unless there was some issue.
Over time Ted began to get some complaints from his customers, so he tried to talk to the managers about the reports he had received, but each one of them took it as an affront. Some of managers even began talking behind his back.
This led him to become an outcast in his own company. When he came into the office the tension palpable. He hated it.
Being made unwelcome in you own company is a pretty unpleasant pill to swallow.
How can you take Ted’s advice to heart and avoid this situation?
The issue Ted was facing was abdication versus delegation. What is the difference?
Abdication Versus Delegation
When you place an individual or a team in charge of an area, system, or process and say to them, “Here it is, take it, it is all yours and only call me if there is some major problem,” you have abdicated your authority over the function.
Whereas, if you say to them, “You are in charge of this area (or operation), and I would like to sit down with you periodically to review how things are going” (you decide how often), you have now delegated your authority.
There is a huge difference between abdication and delegation.
Many times business owners, leaders, and management personnel end up abdicating various areas of their company because they either don’t want to deal with a particular area or they feel they are too busy to be involved in the area.
The issue is that when you abdicate control to employees and then have to speak to them because a difficulty is occurring, they may feel you are intruding on their space and may say to you, “I have it under control, don’t you trust me?” The problem with this situation is that no forum has been set up to review their performance.
How to Effectively Delegate Management Responsibility
To avoid abdication, when you put someone in charge of an area, simply say “I would like to meet every ______ to review how things are going.” You fill in the blank in determining if you want to meet weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or quarterly. Also, you should define what will be covered during the meetings and if any metrics for the area will also be discussed.
Establishing these meetings should not be a problem for the person being promoted or put in charge of an area, because when he/she receives the promotion or increased responsibility, a large amount of goodwill is produced, and, therefore, setting up the periodic meetings will be considered simply part of the package that comes with the new responsibilities.
Thereafter, when you meet, you are keeping your word, and virtually anything is fair game to be discussed during the meeting.
This is effective delegation.
Abdicating something often comes back to haunt you. Therefore, don’t cut yourself out of the control and communications loop—delegate responsibility for something but make sure you set up regularly scheduled meetings to review the status of the area.
What If You Accidently Practiced Abdication?
What if you accidently practiced abdication and the person is resisting you now trying to “intrude” on their space?
To solve this dilemma, chose a problem you are observing in the person’s area that you have some expertise or experience with and the next time you see the person, subtly bring up the situation and at the appropriate time, offer your insights.
If that goes well, then suggest that you meet to discuss this ONE issue more fully. At the end of that meeting suggest that going forward you meet periodically so that you could work together on any other situations they may be facing.
If you need assistance with effectively managing your key personnel by practicing effectual delegation versus abdication, please contact us using the below information so we can show you how to effectively manage your key personnel.
Fountainhead Consulting Group, Inc. is an Innovation and Business Planning firm. During the past 21, years we have shown over 1,200 companies how to achieve their goals by using our unique, comprehensive, and systematic FastTrak Innovation Program™, Innovation Academy™, and Structure of Success™ methodologies. Using the components in these methodologies, each month we examine an aspect of how to transform your business or organization into a true 21st Century enterprise.
Office: (770) 642-4220
George.Horrigan@FountainheadConsultingGroup.com
Tags: Business Planning, entrepreneur, front end of innovation, innovation, invention, small business consulting, small business planning, start a business
