Stay Late or Delegate

There's an old saying in management: "Stay late or delegate."

How true that is. And interesting how many managers avoid delegation. That avoidance may be for many reasons, but the most common is "I can do it faster and better."

What these managers fail to realize is they can do it faster and with fewer errors because they have experience. I'll bet when they were learning the task they weren't so fast and they made more errors.

"But I don't have time Dan." Then find time, because one of the duties of a manager is to train and develop subordinates. Look at the training time as an investment that will payoff quickly. After just one or two training sessions, you can start to reduce the training time commitment. Before you know it, the delegate will be up to speed and accuracy. The training time will cease. You'll now enjoy the time savings.

For example, if you spend 2 hours training a delegate in a job that takes you 15 minutes (with your daily training time investment ranging from 30 minutes at the beginning to 5 minutes near the end), you'll recover those hours in just 8 days!


About me: Dan Pelley teaches time management as part of his "Managing for Results" program, one of five programs leading to a Certificate in Supervisory Management. 137 companies in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New York have one or more people who earned this certificate.

Copyright © 2009 Daniel W. Pelley
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