Learning to delegate is a skill that every new manager must learn, and usually learn it fast. Yet all share one thing in common, they want to jump in and get the task completed, yet delegating correctly is actually better for the business unit, it develops the skills of the whole team and that is important for the success of the manager.

The art of delegation is largely about breaking each job into achievable tasks and entrusting that a group of competent individuals will be able to complete that assignment. Ultimately this depends on having a competent team involved in delivering the project at hand. In this context a project is defined as any block of work requiring more than a simple task to complete it. Projects can last anywhere between an hour and several months or years; typically they last several days and involve any business discipline, even those not typically associated with project work.

Delegation arguably requires a mutual level of understanding of all the things that need to be completed and when they should be completed. It can be postulated that delegation skills are rarely well understood, one of the problems being that an effective problem solver can be that they are ineffective at assigning responsibilities to members of a team that they now run. In part this is because they consider themselves as the only person capable of delivering results. Yet we all know that effective delegation helps reducing the process time and elicits collective brilliance from the team. This it can be seen the heart of the team functioning as a well oiled machine.

Letting go of the details can be a difficult thing for any person in a management position to do. It is all too easy to think that you are the only person that understands all of the details of the task at hand or perhaps it is the belief that no one else can do it as well as us. This, however, is the wrong approach. Asking assistance from others is not demonstrating a weakness, but instead it is a sign of confidence, strong management, and effective leadership. Yet many managers remember how effective they were at completing the task at hand and feel the need to jump right in, yet they should not – the task is one for their team to complete, not for themselves alone. In fact letting go of the details actually empowers the manager to take things to the next level; it is about leadership and gaining an understanding a bigger picture, which always empowers the manager.

As a manager it is important to establish a positive work environment where employees are not paralyzed by fear of failure, the effective manager must act a guide in moving projects forwards.

Further reading:

* Leadership and The Fine Art of Delegation
* Delegation: The Problem Solver Becoming The Manager
* The Effective Manager: Empowering Your Staff to Harness Their Strengths
* Delegating is Especially Difficult When Things Go Wrong
* Controlling The Success of The Delegated Task

This short walk down the corridor often speaks volumes more than the weekly project meeting. To me this signals a time when a one-to-one meeting is required, in order to get to the bottom of the problem.

With remote team members this type of reaction seeking or non-verbal communication is not evident. It is possible to hear fear when a person speaks, yet in a teleconference it is possible to hide – simply by remaining silent. When you are in a teleconference with your remote team members do you ever ask for personal feedback from every person present? Trouble is that it is all too easy to forget the silent ones even in a face-to-face meeting.

Generally speaking in any meeting there are two reasons to be silent. Firstly shyness, and secondly because that individual has something to hide.

Shyness is a symptom of managing comfort zones. We can all be shy when confronted with something new, and perhaps a little intimidated particularly when we understand very little about it. It can normally be managed by coaxing that person out of their existing comfort zone and expanding that comfort zone to include the new working environment.

Having something to hide is a different matter. These team members are the onces who are most likely to bring bad results on a project, irrespective of the circumstances. Projects are always limited by time and resources, whenever there are problems it is always vital to share. Managing projects via Agile methods does allow problem areas to be ring-fenced and focused on more thoroughly at a later stage. I am always more concerned about those who hide away because they have a problem than I am the shy person.

Despite sayings like “a problem shared is a problem halved” having entered the main-flow of society, people tend to be concerned that when a problem is identified then it is their personal challenge to solve it. They hide the problem in the hope that no-one finds out about the problem. Sadly this is the point when it starts to have a negative impact on everything that you do. Project working is not generally the place for heroics. That person who focuses on the problem and tends to lose sight of their deliverables.  Here we are back at the team member who rushes back the other way when when they see you, their manager, in the corridor. Something is wrong here and needs to be solved.

BUT how do you do this when the person is working remotely? Many project managers believe that having remote workers is too risky. Yet it is the things we do not wish to do that we are often forced to do.  There is a certain amount that can be achieved by regular visits to remote sites, yet at all times you remain a stranger at that remote location – so there is a psychology to managing remote visits. Remote project workers are a fact of life, as are constrained project budgets. The latter reduces out ability to complete regular remote-site visits, so it is essential to identify remoteness challenges of virtual teams in other ways.

It is vital all virtual team members are a part of developing and following the team plan – this must be lived and breathed. Knowing each remote worker is important – you probably need to spend a disproportionately high amount of time developing this relationship. You need to stay in touch, daily is best; set and follow an agenda for all meetings – ensure it is business focused. Leverage technology where appropriate – particularly collaboration tools.

In order to make a good decision it is important to have at hand all of the pertinent facts. In a business environment that means having all the information, the statistics and personal knowledge necessary to make a decision. However we often have to make decision based on something less, the pressure of business need that snap decision. Apparently 80% of business leaders have to make major decisions without full information.

Having made a few of these types of decision myself over the years I know it is important to decide and move on. Today we have more information at our fingertips than we have ever had before. I can also attest even where decisions were made based on full Business Intelligence and forecasts mistakes can still be made, yet at the time a decision was necessary in order to move the situation forward. We are after all living in the here and now. Yesterday is over, and tomorrow never comes so we have to decide based on the best information available. Making better information available may be a part of the decision that we make. But still the decision must be made.

So we must take ownership of the decisions made and learn from them. Some may say that therefore we must also take the blame when things go wrong. As a part of learning (and these days most organisations seek to be learning organisations) we must learn when things go wrong and ensure that we do not make the same mistakes again. After all we based the decision on the best information that we had available to us at the time. But of course on the basis of living in the here and now we should also be prepared to re-look at old decisions and see if there are things to be learnt.

I have to think that nothing is permanent, we can always start over, make a new decision. But that is something people can be afraid to do – me included.

Here is where I hear some people scream “Oh No! – that Giblett fellow is going to cost us a fortune as we implement new systems in order to face new world challenges”. No that is not necessary. Just because we face change does not mean sweeping away our systems and replacing them with new. The change I am talking about here is ensuring that the business processes are capable of working successfully right here, right now. It is a business matter, not a systems one.

Essential tools include:

= A mobile/cellular phone. Which must be answerable at all times.

= Instant Messaging. This aids in visibility as on-line and available at all times.

= Remote Meeting Software, and a high quality phone so that you are involved in all meetings

= On-line training facility

= Status reports. They may not be needed for your job, but they assist visibility.

= A professional email signature and corporate email account if you are a contractor.

Phone availability is essential having the mobile with you at all times is essential, staff must be available during normal business hours. The tele-worker needs to be more visible than their office counterpart. Many office workers are expected to be available at all times these days, hence the popularity of the dreaded Blackberry.

Tele-workers should be given a corporate email account along with Instant Messaging capabilities. We want to ensure that they are a part of the corporate entity, and directories should include them.  They should accessing applications on the corporate network (through VPNs and firewalls). Depending on the role that they are required to perform granting access to corporate applications should be through virtual systems; what they have access to may need to be more limited than if they were doing the same job at the corporate office.

Instant messaging and remote meeting solutions are a part of the employee’s visibility in the role that they are performing. Many offices have found that use of IM within the office environment improves the flow of communications within the office in a non-destructive way. I have though seen it used to save one company money as one of the warehouse employees spotted an exceptionally large order for a customer – tried to call, engaged; turned to IM – success, there was a typo on the order which was corrected saving the company both money and reputation.

On-line training is very important in the new environment as the tele-worker can miss out on trainign about new procedures. Products like Camtasia are inexpensive and make the setup of an on-line training capability easy. Now the company is able to provide a suite of training materials for all of its employees.

In IT remote meeting software, like GoTo Meeting have been very widely used, they are rapidly becoming a must have tool in training. When two people can share a computer screen, the need ability to “show me” presents itself and knowledge and communication can flow freely. This can also facilitate conference calling even where no computerised element is required for the discussion.

Video conferencing software and webcams are certainly something to consider in making the tele-worker and effective part of the corporate entity.

When it come to providing status reports the majority of people groan then say “Must I?”. For the tele-worker, this is a key component of the work, their trumpet. A tele-worker must turn this into an art-form, but always be brief. The manager will always appreciate the 25 words that states concicely what has been acheived. and perhaps another 25 words about the challenges ahead. Where problems exist suggest solutions.

A challenging time ahead? I certainly think so.

I am grateful to Ray Mannion for his “Must Have Tools for Working Remotely” in preparing this item.

We would all like to say “Hold your horses we are only running 1 project this year” however this simply does not meet business reality. For the IT manager as soon as they have defined the annual list of priorities, there is pressure to add new projects, or to change the scope of existing authorised projects.

It is simply not possible to say ‘NO’ to every request, eventhough this word is one of the most powerful within the IT Manager’s vocabulary. The pressures of these competing priorities can result in the splitting of attention, loss of focus, and inability to complete tasks and projects in a timely manner. In today’s business climate there is immense pressure for projects to succeed, yet we know that each additional request reduces the chances on-time delivery

We may moan that the business community has no concept of the impact of a change in scope. Yet in the time it takes to deliver the average project business needs have changed and IT cannot ignore the evolving needs. Organizations need to reliably deliver projects in shorter and shorter intervals, and some of the pressure include:

• Many projects and few clear priorities
• Demands to multi-task
• Procrastination,
• Poor planning,
• Personal disorganization

Lack of clear priorities will cause inefficiencies in the day-to-day utilisation of project resources. If a Mary finishes a milestone ahead of schedule does the project manager or Mary know what they should be doing next?  As we have multiple projects Mary may think they can get a head-start on a new project, yet this may not be the wisest course of action at this time.

It is not a matter of whether or not to prioritise. It is largely a question of who is the most appropriate person to do a specific task and providing clear priorities within the context of the overall priority list. In the absence of priorities, team members will use their own prioritisation methods. First in first out (FIFO) is rarely the best form of prioritisation, yet it is the method that most people will fall back-on in the absence of any other method.

Multi-tasking (or overloading) is recognised as one of the biggest obstacles in a project for a team member, yet an IT manager is expected to do this with consummate ease. For the IT manager it is essential to gain control of their workday,  The key to doing this effectively is in ensuring that the “do it, delegate it, defer it, drop it” rule is effectively applies to every item in your inbox (and I don’t just mean the Outlook Inbox, I include the physical and mental inboxes as well) click here for an earlier article on this topic. Once you have control on your inbox, you can control the competing priorities. You therefore increase your personal productivity by gaining control of your workday.

By Peter B. Giblett

We can often look at others, who seem to have their stack of work perfectly arranged and appear unflustered whenever things go wrong. We can be the same, and this will help us deliver our projects on-time, irrespective of that last minute curve-ball thrown our way.

For anyone wishing to turn around how they organise themselves I heartily recommend you read David Allen’s Getting Things Done, it is a great book and the basis for much of this article. Before reading David’s book I had struggled to find my own philosophy for getting things done most of the other approaches or software I have seen don’t really work.

Some of the problems we face:

• New demands
• Insufficient resources
• The changing nature of our work
• Too many deadlines

If you can capture and complete all tasks that need to be done then you can certainly be a star within your organisation.

With all ‘stuff’ that we must do irrespective of whether that is a complex task like writing a justification for a project, or the act of picking up out suit from the dry cleaners needs to get prioritised somewhere within our day. So to be successful in organising ourselves there is not really any separation between ‘things for work’ and other tasks it is simply a matter of where we will do the activity.

Any ‘stuff’ that is to be done is logically in our in-basket (even if we do not possess a physical basket).With every item we must know what it is and decide if it actionable. With every new idea you can make one of the following choices

• Do it,
• Defer it,
• Delegate it, or
• Drop it.

Non-actionable items may be filed as reference material, or thrown away.

Actionable items require some action to resolve them. An item can either be responded to immediately, put for future action, it can be delegated, or included as part of a project.

If we are going to respond immediately David Allen suggests it should take no longer than two minutes to complete these tasks – I will do it now it it takes less than 10 minutes. An invitation to attend a conference in 9 months time may be interesting but we do not need to take action on it today therefore we file it in a future action file. At some future date we can decide whether or not to attend. Likewise that nice-to-have requirement by the production manager. We can therefore file it for future review. A future action should either be either entered in the diary, or filed for future review.

We have to continue to review these items at the appropriate time, in a series of files that we look at daily. David Allen calls these a tickler file. We have day files 1 to 31 and monthly files January to December. We bring an item from where we filed it to the front by continuing to review our files and then performing the relevant action at the relevant time. That conference next September has an ‘early saver’ deadline in July so we place it for future action next July. That requirement for the production manager is placed in the active file for 10th of next month (day file 10). As time goes on each file cycles to the back, ready for re-use.

If we decide to delegate it, then we are taking the decision to place an item on another person’s work queue. The person we may delegate will be the most appropriate person in the corporation. It may even be the President of the company. Within your own team it is important to understand the the team workloads. Remember you are adding to the team activity list by this action. When delegating a task to someone outside our team the appropriate level of diplomacy is required. This is especially true if you are adding to the already bulging actions for the CEO.

Within the IT team actionable items are essentially the lifeblood of the department and the IT leader needs to have their finger on the pulse.

It is not possible to do every task placed in front of us. At the end of the day you need to trust in your system and ensure it works for you. If lists fall behind reality then you will always be playing catch-up. When you trust your system you can feel fine about both the things you are going to do, as well as those you will not. Additionally within IT there should only be a limited number of ways that a team will pull activities off the work queue. Team members need to ensure that nothing gets in through back-door personal request.

By Peter B. Giblett