I’ve mentioned in another post that delegating effectively is one of the key skills you need to learn in order to scale your company successfully. In this post I would like to share some of the key learnings I had at InstaCarro in this regard.
1) Choose an Objective Setting tool
One of the issues I used to have when I started delegating tasks to my team was lack of coordination and focus. This generated anxiety among the management team. They claimed they didn’t have clarity on what their peers were working on and/or why.
One of the things we did to solve this issue is started to work with quarterly OKRs. In a nutshell OKRs (objectives and key results) is a management tool that will allow your team to define how the work they are doing is connected with the overall strategy of your company.
The way the process is conducted is by asking each of your direct reports, based on the overall strategy of the company to define:
• 2 to 3 broad objectives for their area
• At least 4 key results for each objective.
Objectives can always be something inspirational and broad; however key results always need to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time based). Thus, an example could be:
Objective #1: Improve customer satisfaction
Key Results #1: Implement NPS methodology to measure customer satisfaction up to end of the month
Key Result# 2: Achieve an NPS of +20
…
OKRs are also good because aside giving focus, they will allow their team to delegate the tasks among the team. The example below seems a little bit theoretical but is very easy to understand:
Source: http://content.betterworks.com/goal-setting/getting-started-with-okrs
If you like this tool I suggest reading some additional material to grasp the tool more thoroughly. Otherwise you can look into other objective setting tools. MBO (management by objectives) is another very popular tool. Working only with KPIs is something I don’t recommend as it extremely short-termed and does not always allow you to see the big picture of what’s really going on.
2) Don’t micro-manage, be a supportive partner
Something I noticed in my experience is that when I received feedback that I needed to delegate more I became an absent manager. This is, when a direct report came with a problem I started having attitudes as “don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions” This is a terrible thing to do as you are literally discouraging your team to give you a heads up when they are lost or need your help. At the end of the day your job as a leader is to give direction to your team, and only step in when they ask for help or you see they are lost.
As a result of this, when I realised my team stated to get lost or they asked for help several times I went back to the micro-managing style.
The following framework explained by Kim Scott in her book Radical Candor is an amazing framework that has helped me a lot to find the right balance.
3) Have weekly one-on-ones with your team
Coming soon
4) Conduct efficient staff meetings
Coming soon
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