"Stop delegating" had me thinking of that "micromanagement is god" jackass a couple weeks back. The gist of this is that DePinto spent a bunch of time working at doing the same stuff normal worker bees do to learn more about the business, which is quite sensible.
I agree that the title is misleading, but this is good advice.
On the company I work for (insurance sector), they tried to implement an "internship" program in which people from different parts of the company (especially software development) would spend some time in different parts of the company, so we'd learn what they do and how our work impacted theirs (greatly in the case of software development of course).
Sadly it was cancelled, but I thought it was a great idea at the time.
I worked a saturday in manufacturing years ago. Quite different from software development! I learned they entered the hard disk badspot table into the bios three times during testing! We went right back and fixed the format tool to preserve the entries. Saved manhours of work per week.
I'm finding it hard to reconcile these rules with comparative advantage, but maybe "delegating" refers only to subordinates and not to divvying among cofounders, which is what I'm thinking of. (Also, your "willing doesn't mean that it's smart for you to be the one doing it" note somewhat addresses this.)
"Rather not" isn't necessarily the same as "unwilling".
If it's work you'd simply find unpleasant or boring but would still do if it had to be done, delegating it is not a bad thing. (With perhaps the caveat that you should do it at least once so you fully understand it.)
If it's work that you would not do under any circumstances, the proper question might be: why are you allowing your company to do this? Or why are you working for a company that does this?
absolutely. For more minor tasks the point is more subtle- it forces you to make sure you're delegating because it is the best thing for the organization, and not because you simply don't feel like doing it and happen to be in a position to delegate.
Interestingly, even if you (as the delegator) aren't aware of the difference, the people you are delegating to are most likely picking up on it, and it will have an enormous impact on their motivation and trust.
There is a cumulative effect here. If someone who is consistent on that first point were to call you up and ask you to fly to a meeting on his/her behalf on a Saturday evening, you'll (emotionally, at least) have no problem doing it. If, on the other hand, someone who is _not_ consistent on this point asks the same thing (whether or not you've consciously realized it) you will likely have some degree of resistance or outright resentment.
You have a big potential investor coming over tomorrow and the office is a wreck. A poor leader would delegate the cleanup simply because he/she can, and people will pick up the psychological cues. A good leader will ask himself if he's willing to do it but can better the organization more if he does something else, and only if there is a positive answer will he delegate the job. And again, people will pick up the psychological cues.
LOWELL, MA–Jeremy Novato, a recent graduate of a well-respected Lowell high school, has secured a position with the McDonald's Corporation, a high-ranking Fortune 500 company. "I'm tremendously excited to have this opportunity to work with the world's number-one restaurant chain," said Novato, 18, pouring ketchup into a large metallic pump dispenser at the $41 billion company's Exeter Road branch Monday."
I would delegate but with feedback. After a while the guy is going to get in everyone's way. And by feedback I would mean more than numbers crossing his desk.
