Do it Yourself Vs. Delegate

Consider this example. Archan has recently been promoted as a marketing Lead at an FMCG company. Till a few months back, he was a senior executive in the same marketing team, handling multiple vendors and assignments quite efficiently. Today he faces a greater challenge. With the promotion, he feels that the responsibilities have just grown on him, the deliverables are bigger and the timelines shorter. Earlier, he would be focused on getting a linear stream of objectives completed. That was fairly easy for him, given that he had spent around a couple of years mastering that. But no B-school education had made him ready for the complexities of handling multiple work-streams with a team of people reporting to him. What makes things worse is that he has done almost all the pieces of the work at one time or the other in the past. He is just so tempted to jump into the action and finish everything himself. "So what if I need to slog this weekend, the work will be done and I'll chill over the next weekend." We have all been there, that so called 'Chill Weekend' never comes.

• The problem as Archan perceives it - There's just too much work to do and too little time. The team under him is unable to understand all the complexities, and hence he needs to play the ringmaster and the lion at the same time.
• The problem that Archan should actually be solving - He has a capable team under him, but it lacks direction. His primary task should be to break down the complex pieces of the objective and make the right people responsible within the team. Communicating a clear line of direction along with deadlines will do the trick.

Delegation is not a negative word. It is one of the core principles of managing workflows and people.

Not delegating work also sends out a negative message to your teams.

• Your team feels that what they are doing is the right thing to do. Without direction or guidance, they will end up self justifying whatever amount of work they are able to achieve. This will come up strongly during a review or a one on one discussion. Don't be surprised if your subordinate rates herself and her work much higher than what you actually value it at. Because, guess what, You never told her what she should actually be doing.
• The team member never really learns. Since you took up a lot of things on yourself, she is left out of the learning process and impedes her own growth. While you end up not realizing the full potential of the resource.

The reason we are made 'Managers' is so that we utilise our bandwidth in things that are more critical. Weigh properly the decisions that can not be left open to your teams and pass on everything else. There are various decision making metrics to help you with this. Remember that both your time and energy are limited resources. Use them well to get success in your work while leading a more efficient and happier team.

Here's the link to the first article in the series - https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/first-time-managers-rajroop-bhattacharya

Would love to hear your comments and feedback !