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Managing is organising other people to get something done. Make it any more complicated than that and you’ll start talking like an academic. Sometimes you read that good management is achieving the aim with the economic use of the available resources. But, you may not need all the resources that are available. Good management is determining how few resources and people you need to get the job done, and use only those. Good management is achieving results through other people. This is particularly relevant if you’ve recently been promoted and find yourself responsible for getting results. You have to change from doing things yourself to getting them done through other people. You are unlikely to have sufficient knowledge of everything done in the organisation ― you have to rely on others ― that is, you must delegate. If you do have adequate knowledge, you certainly won’t have the time to do it all yourself ― you must delegate. You can’t be in two places at once. If you have to meet a client in the north on Monday and be at an important meeting in the south at the same time, you can’t do both. You have to delegate. Delegating is one of a manager’s most difficult tasks. Delegation, responsibility, authority To be a successful manager, you must know what responsibilities and authority you possess especially how much money you can spend, and the extent to which you can commit your organisation. If your subordinates are to do their jobs satisfactorily, they too, must know what authority they have. Responsibility should be clear from the objectives, and couched in terms of results to be achieved within a period. Objectives should be agreed by manager and subordinate and never imposed. If you are responsible for something that can be quantified, such as numbers, costs, or profits, you must know how your organisation defines these and how they are calculated. Responsibility Responsibility is the obligation to carry out a task and is the actual work that is delegated. If someone accepts the ‘responsibility to carry out a task’ from you, that person has become your subordinate for that specific task. However, be careful about giving anyone overall responsibility ― only do it if they are in charge of the cleaning and maintenance staff. Authority Authority is the right to act on behalf of an organisation or in the name of a superior. Sometimes, you hear that authority must be equal to responsibility. This is nonsense. It confuses different things: responsibility is an obligation; authority is a right or power. Compare it with driving a car. You are given the authority to drive a vehicle and are responsible for keeping within speed limits. But, in no way can the authority to drive be equal to responsibility for driving legally. Provide adequate authority If a speed limit is mandatory, you must provide the driver with the means of measuring speed. Do the same when managing. If subordinates are to do their jobs properly, give them sufficient tools to do the job and the right to carry out the tasks to discharge their responsibilities. The authority you grant must be adequate to accomplish the delegated tasks, but must not exceed your own authority. If you are responsible for a given level of expenditure, obviously you cannot allocate expenditure budgets to subordinates that would exceed this. With non-quantifiable tasks, it is not easy to define extent and limits of authority. Consider as examples the tasks: human resource management, employees’ morale, maintaining contact with clients and committees, training, adapting multicultural factors to work situations. For none of these is it straightforward to define limits of authority or set standards of performance. How to delegate Delegating is giving someone part of your work. This means they will do some of the things you like to do; you cannot delegate only the nasty jobs. Be clear and understand exactly what you are employed for: the main objectives of your job, what you have to achieve and how that achievement is measured and judged to be satisfactory. When you have organised yourself, you can organise others and delegate. Use a five-point plan when delegating: • What has to be done. • Who is to do it. • When it is to be done. • Where it is to be done. • At what cost and with what result. Do not say how it has to be done. You delegate by agreeing results that have to be achieved by an agreed time and giving authority to use resources and expenditures to a stated limit. Coffin makers and ball throwers Don’t imprison your subordinates in coffins! Some managers make terms of reference so rigid that their subordinates might as well be in coffins because they have no room to move. In contrast, if you are too laid back the way you delegate, you may as well throw them tasks like tennis balls. “Catch this one Geoffrey! Missed?..Sorry, here’s another one….Oh dear! That bounced over your head.” Keep at it. They’ll catch some of them. ‘Through-the-door-management’ Don’t confuse subordinates with a welter of verbiage; make your instructions easy to understand. You might use arcane methods, intricate statistical procedures, and complex financial techniques to arrive at decisions. Don’t make life difficult for those who have to carry out your orders. Tell them you want the long planks on the left, the short ones on the right, and the odd pieces in a separate pile! Cultivate ‘through-the-door-management’. No matter how abstruse or erudite the deliberations with your colleagues, when you go through your office door, who do you tell to do what? Put it in writing As Sam Goldwyn, the renowned film producer once said, “A verbal contract is not worth the paper it’s written on!” If the task you are delegating is simple, routine, or has been done by the person before, if it will involve a small amount of time, if progress can be easily checked, if a mistake will be of little consequence, if there’s a ‘panic’ on, give an oral instruction. But, • If it involves details, • More than one person or department is involved, • If a mistake will be serious, • If you will be held responsible, put it in writing. And, check that it is clear and unambiguous and subordinates understand it. Copyright © 2005 L A Rogers
Article Source: http://www.articledestination.com
Dr Len Rogers is Professor of international business at International School of Management (Paris, New York, Tokyo, Barcelona) and director of Computer Resources International SA Luxembourg. His address is len.rogers@pandora.be and his website www.lenrogers.com/ (currently being reconstructed and updated).
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