What Managers Sometimes Forget When They Delegate

"Please do this for me," that is what the delegation starts with.

It is possible to delegate something to a secretary or to a professional in the team of the manager.

The question what to delegate is the first to answer. "What Do I need to do," is a logical question the team member will ask. "Who will do it," is another question. That is also part of the process of delegation. There maybe even a question like; "how do you want it?"

Basically these questions refer to attributes or details about the job or activity that needs to be done.

What is often implicit and what turns up when there are problems is not so much a question, but the part that the delegation starts with; this is a real contract.

To imagine this you'd better think of the delegation being a transaction between two companies. When you hire someone to do a job, you don't just tell this person to do something, but you request an offer, than the person fills in the offer with his details -- "yes I will do this together with the other activities I have to do (transporting parcels, f.e.)" -- and when the price is agreed, the contract is signed and the work is performed. In return there is a sign (invoice) that the job has been executed.

In an organization this overhead is removed, but with it the essential of delegation is often overlooked at. The essential is that there is still an implicit contract between you and the person who is doing the job.

This contract implies details like: what, when ("when I have time, I have got other things to do...") and how - the quality of the job.

From the managers' side the fact that delegation is about setting up a contract is often forgotten, so it starts with some information "to get going."

From the execution point of view the forgotten element is related to the same (missing) contract. If the manager is not clear and explicit, the person to perform the delegation won't either stick to the formal contract and will forget to give feedback (the invoice). This is not a problem, because the manager who does the delegation will have to control and check whether the work has been done.

However,

Time that is gained by not setting up a proper "contract," will lead to higher costs on control and automatically lead to more work on the side of the one who is doing the job. And more work for the manager in controlling the job to delegate.

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What Managers Sometimes Forget When They Delegate