Читать книгу The Gift of Time - Thomas Gail - Страница 6

There are multiple benefactors of successful or even simply effective delegation when it is an integral part of a company's operational culture.

We will address the financial benefits which apply to business owners, or those responsible and directly able to influence company growth, later; but in the meantime, what about everyone and everything else? Where are the benefits for them and what do they look like, and how – most importantly – can this be measured? As well as what I term ‘soft benefits’, which relate to how people feel in their work and in their life, there are also ‘hard benefits’, which can directly transcribe into financial improvement. It's a (somewhat sad) fact of life that money talks. In terms of adopting a new way of working (i.e. delegating more and the encouragement to do so in a corporate environment), there has to be a clear benefit to the organization, something more than ‘hope value’. The prospect of generating an increase of cold hard cash is always a good motivator, and therein lies the importance of the value of delegation in financial terms.

Whatever the varied benefits of delegation, there is one common denominator which results from effective delegation: time. By virtue of handing over workload or tasks, the delegator first gets his or her time back. This is the benefit of delegation. In truth, it is the only benefit of delegation to the delegator, what then transpires may or may not be a beneficial use of that time, but time in itself provides the benefit of choice.

Clearly, if one operates as a business owner or at the top of an organization and with limited supervision, the choice of what to do with time freed up is arguably greater. If the ‘why’ which motivates the delegation in the first place is clear, agreed and achievable then the benefits become more recognizable and tangible as they manifest. If the ‘why’ is not clear – and we will tackle this in greater depth as part of the process of delegation – then time can easily be wasted, and we are all capable of that.

If delegation in its strictest sense is passing on work to someone else and if the immediate and most obvious result of that is an unfilled gap in time, let's look at where that could lead in the following diagram (Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1 Delegation benefits map.

If we back-pedal a little, we can start at home with the young. The purpose of a parent is to make themselves redundant. There is more on this – with commentary from Elizabeth O'Shea, a renowned parenting coach – in Chapter 14. In achieving their own redundancy, parents (and clearly within this term I include any form of carer) produce young adults, capable, independent and equipped, insofar as they can be, to take on the world of adulthood.

The result, of course, will be happier, more independent children who know that part of their role is to pass on this knowledge to future generations.

And if we start to achieve ‘redundancy’ at work, we will create a rolling production line of passing back the workload, tasks and required outcomes, freeing up time for us to develop, grow and find new ways of achieving more, and being more fulfilled.

There are many routes and stakeholders and there are many motivating reasons for making oneself redundant; retirement, for example, is most successfully achieved for both the individual and the organization if a successor who picks up the workload and carries forth the legacy of the retiree is put into place. The retiree is free to retire because he or she is effectively redundant, by design of course.

Similarly, an employee leaving a role or an organization is a fact of life and a fact of a successful career. Just as in the case of our retiree, leaving a role is much more successfully achieved if the role leaver has been able to achieve their own ‘redundancy’ through the appointment and training of a successor.

Great delegation creates jobs at the back end of the production line and development, improvement and breakthroughs at the front line. One can't possibly do all that one already does and then add in more in order to improve or progress.

The ability to delegate with the intention of making the initial job description as redundant as possible

• creates employment, directly and virtually

• means flexible working and new self-employment opportunities for otherwise ‘unemployable’ people4

• enables employees at all levels to delegate those areas of their workload that are least favourable, that they're less good at or that they can pass on to a potential successor so that they can add new skills, take on or develop new activities or explore new ways to improve their self, job, team or organization, i.e. have a better and more enjoyable job and so be a better and more pleasant co-worker

• enables managers and executives to explore the limits of their potential because they are not bogged down by repetitive tasks through downward delegation

• enables employees at all levels to develop their skill sets and experience and to earn accolades and show their potential to their superiors through successful upward delegation as well as successful receipt of downward delegated workload

• enables a happier workforce comprising workers who play to their strengths through sideways delegation and get to enjoy jobs that consist largely of things they enjoy doing most and are best at.

Economic impacts spread far:

• In creating employment, we create increased disposable income and an increase in consumerism as well as all the related impacts on the housing and property market.

• In freeing up SME owners to create growth, we already know of the hundreds of billions of pounds this adds to the global economy.

• In freeing up managers and executives to be creative and generate growth, we naturally return increased taxes to the government and improve shareholder return (which also presumably results in bonuses for staff in all the requisite benefits mentioned above regarding disposable income).

• In applying all the same delegation disciplines and in achieving all the same results in civil service, government and government divisions, we achieve improvements in service delivery and through reduction in costs underlying a return or benefit to the taxpayer.

• In applying all the same to charities, an increased proportion of funds raised can be attributed – one hopes – to the causes supported by the charity.