Delegation and the Five Elements

Leaders are responsible for delegation, and need to understand how to delegate effectively respective to the people to whom they are assigning tasks. A consistent challenge I see in my clients is making the leap from being assigned tasks by a superior to assigning tasks to direct reports.

The Institute for Generative Leadership has identified the five elements for making requests. They include:

1.          Who is making the request and who is receiving it

2.          Conditions of satisfaction

3.          Specified time for fulfillment

4.          The shared background of obviousness

5.          Concern is clear – why is the request being made?

When we apply the five elements to becoming an SSV (Samurai Samba Vinci) Leader, delegation becomes easier and more streamlined with greater results.

The first element revolves around the people involved in a request. Who is speaking and who is listening? Who is the performer of the request and who’s the audience? This sounds rudimentary, but imagine a meeting in which one person says, “We need to do this project. We need to implement this system.” I’ve heard these vague and generalized requests made many times; the outcomes are rarely positive. Too much information is missing, leaving those with whom a request has been made scratching their heads and guessing.

A critical question for everyone involved here is: Who in the room of 20 people is the “we” that is going to be implementing the request? Is the performer identified? Is the customer identified? Too often, it’s not. The person making the request needs to be super clear about who is assigned which specific tasks and responsibilities required to fulfill the request.

“John is going to be producing this wireframe and I’m going to be the one that is going to be checking on you to see if it is done,” is one example. Another is. “John and Mary will be creating the copy for the new website. There is a team working on it. Adrian and April will be the customers for it.”

The second element is the conditions of satisfaction. If a leader says, “Claudio, you need to produce a report by Friday this week,” I might be thinking, “Okay, what is this report like? Is it a two-page report, a summary report or a 45-page report in detail? What conditions do I need to meet to satisfy the request?”

Too often, those specific details aren’t expressed. I’ve heard versions of the following more times than I can count: “Oh, Claudio, can you produce this report for me by Friday?” Without any specifics, I’m left having to figure things out on my own – often with disappointing results because I didn’t do things right.

Expectations must be clear for the conditions of satisfaction to be met.

The third element is specified time for fulfillment. Often, we listen to a request like, “Can you do this for me ASAP?” First of all, what does the request mean? Does it mean that I need to drop everything that I’m doing so that I can just focus on that straight away, or does ASAP mean that it can be done by tomorrow morning? Requests need to be very clear with a specific time for anticipated fulfillment.

In New York, for instance, ASAP means yesterday. In Brazil, it may mean in the next couple of months. In Italy, the same, or maybe in the next month or so after ferie d’agosto, August vacation when the majority of city dwellers head to the seaside or countryside for an entire month. (This time off and away is sacred to Italians and leaders would not ask or expect the work to be done during this time.)

An improved version would go something like this: “Claudio, I need this 10-page report done by 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Friday the third.” A request like that leaves no room for error, no room for misunderstanding.

The fourth element is the shared background of obviousness. Is what we are asking someone to do obvious or not? Sometimes, especially if we’re working with multiple departments and matrix teams, the project’s background is completely different. The people we are asking to help us have no clue what we’re talking about. No shared background of obviousness exists.

It’s important to make sure what we’re asking is obvious not just in our department, but across all the channels involved in the request. Just because we have been working in a specialized area doesn’t mean we can assume everyone else will understand what the task or project is about or what’s being asked of them. Without paying attention to all the players in a scene, too often the response can be something like: “I have no clue what you’re talking about” or “My background is completely different.”

The fifth element is the concern for the request. Why are we asking what we are asking for? Why is it that we need it? For example, “I need those reports because I’m going to be having a meeting with the shareholders on Saturday morning. That’s why I need them done by 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday.” Or, “What I need is a two-page executive summary because I’m not going to have time to read through the entire 45-page report before the meeting.”

The concern for the request is very clear in these examples. The person making the request has addressed why this particular request is important.

Once all five elements exist in the request, the number of times that we need to go back to someone gets reduced significantly.

I’ve worked with people who have had to go back to their teams 10, even 15 times because one or more of the five elements wasn’t present. Delegation becomes a nightmare in these cases.

That happens quite a lot. One of my clients asked someone over the course of six months to produce something, but it was not produced. When we reviewed the elements of request and he applied them, the project got produced in less than one week. Greater clarity would have expedited this request.

When I hear people say, “Oh I don’t have time to go through all five elements,” that old saying comes immediately to mind: “If you don’t have time to do it right the first time, when will you have time to do it over?”

Becoming masterful at delegation can save leaders a lot of time, frustration and confusion. It is also a skill that causes our direct reports to respect us more, increasing our executive presence and trust, too. Applying the five elements to our understanding of the SSV (Samurai Samba Vinci) Way clearly improves the chances of requests being done properly, on time and with fewer misunderstandings.

What's your experience when making requests?