Delegation - The moral to the story

Earlier I wrote about an example of a manager unable to let go of control of their team’s tasks. While perhaps it was extreme this example provides us with clues about good practices in delegation:

1. Know the details of the task to a degree where you can make a good delegation decision.
2. Know the capabilities of your team members OR use the team to choose who has the best knowledge and skills for the task (you need to have set up a positive work culture first otherwise the task will become a “hot potato!”)
3. Know the performance requirements for success (based on your knowledge of the task) OR set these performance requirements with the team or team member.
4. Provide input or facilitate the team members’ execution of the task.
5. Assess the task outcome on the basis of the performance requirements.
6. Reflect on what went wrong and celebrate what went right in the task with the team member.
7. Enshrine these learnings with the team through discussion and perhaps case writing.
8. Pass these learnings onto other teams if they are generalisable and valuable across the wider organisational context.

The last three points of this list are essential for good knowledge management – these processes involve: self-reflection, group discussion, and generalisation to the broader organisational context through formal and informal social mechanisms.

In order to practice what I preach, I will be delegating aspects of this blog to my trusted and noble associate Mick Leyden, who is a Project Executive in CPA Australia’s Knowledge Exchange Team.

Mick will be discussing web 2.0 and other commonly available tools in the context of how they can support your business operations and strategy.