Delegation beats chaos in creating a viable business
In a healthy business, power is distributed and organised. Here’s how to avoid the chaotic ‘princely court’ model and start delegating effectively...
Courtiers: not good business
‘‘This whole system is chaos, this building is chaos. You are more frightened of me having the power to stop the chaos than you are of the chaos, and this is a completely unsustainable position for us both to be in. He [the Prime Minister] laughed and said, ‘You’re right, I am more frightened of you having the power to stop the chaos. Chaos isn’t that bad. Chaos means that everyone has to look to me to see who’s in charge’.”
This is how the current government works, according to one of its recent servants. I’ve come across some businesses like this. Have you?
Working at them is like being a courtier to a monarch whose whims dictate that week’s priorities. Favouritism determines not just who gets what but who gets to do what. The result is that politics can drown out problem-solving. The focus is on pleasing the chief rather than doing what’s right for the business.
Healthy businesses mostly don’t revolve entirely around a queen-bee or sun-king. Rather, power is distributed and organised - and this is done via delegation.
When I’m advising managers in fast-developing businesses how to cope with growth we always talk about delegation. Delegation in everyday terms is when you give someone who reports to you one of the ongoing tasks that you are currently doing whilst keeping tabs on how they’re getting on.
Delegation is usually critical to a well-run business. Especially in growing businesses where senior managers are often multitasking and these tasks become meatier and proliferate as the effects of scale kick in.
Delegating work is essential if you want to cope with growth, manage efficiently, scale healthily and develop a business that’s truly viable - which the dictionary defines as ‘capable of independent life’. That means a business where power is devolved, information is distributed and things get done.
So far, so straightforward. But to do it well in a fast-changing, growth business is more complicated. For delegation to be effective you need to make sure the overall management framework is in place. This is often not the case in early-stage, fast-moving companies: management is something that has grown to meet immediate needs rather than been consciously developed.
If you do not understand how delegation works within your business process or your organisational structure there’s a danger of tasks and responsibilities not hanging together. The result can be confusion, frustration and a lack of effectiveness and efficiency. Get this right, on the other hand, and delegation will not only make scaling less uncomfortable - it can be hugely motivational for all parties. An opportunity for personal development as well as corporate progress.
If you haven’t explicitly identified a management framework, this is how I’d go about doing it.
What’s your business process?
Firstly, you need to sketch out your business process. What do you do to create a happy and returning customer, from marketing through to sales and operations? What else do you need to have in place to support this customer-centric process? You need to consider commercial, operational and support aspects of the business.
This is usually best expressed as a flow chart. What it will look like depends on the sector you’re operating in, the maturity of the business and how innovative what you’re doing is. Some businesses are quite generic in how they work. Others, especially start-ups, have their own particular flow with truly disruptive businesses having unique, ground-breaking processes that require some thought to describe.
What functions do you need?
Once you are happy you have captured all aspects of the process you match key steps in the flow chart with functions. These are likely to be familiar, e.g. Sales. But they will most likely have features that are particular to your business process. And if you’re a start-up some functions may overlap or be entirely merged (e.g. sometimes Sales and Marketing sit together).
What does your org chart look like?
These functions can then be laid out as an org chart with each function matched to a senior manager with their respective reports sitting below. This should then be communicated, discussed and confirmed as widely in the business as possible.
Of course, you may already have all of this in place. However, it’s my experience that most early stage businesses haven’t taken a step back to ponder how the business operates and who is doing what in defined and consistent terms.
Why is all this important for delegation? Isn’t it all a bit over-engineered and long-winded? No!
Delegation becomes clear, coherent and widely understood once you have identified your business process and have a matched org chart - and confirmed it all with your team.
How to delegate? And make it as effective as possible...
OK. Now you’re ready to delegate. I would probably focus delegation on those parts of the business that are people-heavy and mission-critical. The biggest obstacle to growth is often capacity. And a great way to create capacity is to identify and separate out key tasks, combine them into roles, employ the right people in them, and then empower them to manage.
Here are some pointers to effective delegation:
Clarity of task: make sure the task arises from the business process and aligns with the org chart. Discuss it widely, making sure everyone who interacts with the role taking on this task understands its purpose
Be clear about objectives: what is expected, what are the main challenges, what does success look like? These questions need to answered with reference to the business process and centred on the customer
Identify KPIs that can be associated with the task. These won’t tell the whole story but are important in prompting questions and highlighting opportunities and challenges within the function and more broadly
Set up a meeting cycle for check-ins, discussion and resolution:
A weekly one-on-one between manager and report where one or more KPIs associated with the task are reviewed and any matters arising are discussed with problems resolved and opportunities capitalised upon
A regular, bigger meeting as some matters won’t be resolvable in the course of a one-on-one. These should be put on the agenda of a group meeting - a senior leadership team, a commercial or operational team, or a departmental team - which should act as a clearing house for issues that need multiple people to resolve. Group meetings also introduce a different sort of pressure to perform: peer pressure can be as motivational as working to please the boss. (Incidentally, a well-designed and timely group meeting will do more than this - but we’re just talking about supporting effective delegation at this point)
I hope that all makes sense. If not, or if you have any suggestions as to how it could be done better, do please let me know at gareth@thinkpiece.co.uk