by Alison Green
Consulted Should be asked for input or needs to be bought in to the project.
Helper Available to help do part of the work.
Approver Signs off on decisions before they’re final. May be the manager, though might also be the executive director, external partner, or board chair.
GIVE WORK TO THE RIGHT PERSON
We sometimes see managers fail at delegation because they assign a project to the wrong person in the first place, trying to fit a round peg into a square hole—for example, assigning the artistic director, who is a creative genius but a disaster with numbers, to prepare a detailed project budget. When delegating work, consider who has the talent and skills to get the job done rather than who should be able to do the task at hand given her background or position. Of course, if you regularly find yourself reluctant to delegate a responsibility that the staff member in that position should be able to handle, you need to assess whether that person is a good fit for the role and determine an appropriate course of action. We discuss this and other performance issues in Chapter Nine.
Let’s say that you’re a development director and your development associate is in charge of the upcoming gala. You might be the M (manager) on this project, and the associate would be the O (owner). The communications director and program director should be consulted (C), the development assistant is an H (helper), and the executive director might be both an H (helper by making calls to the largest donors to ask them to buy tables) and the A (approver on the final program and the table assignments).
If you do nothing else when you’re delegating, make sure that there’s a clear owner for making the project succeed. The owner might then figure out the rest of the MOCHA, but you need to know who is responsible for making the project successful. In fact, one way to think about your challenge as you take on more and more management responsibility is to recognize that your job is to go from being an owner to being a manager. That means that as you find yourself the owner of specific responsibilities, you might be asking yourself, “Should I really be the owner on this, or should I be handing that over to someone else?”
When Is the Project Due?
We realize it sounds obvious to be clear about the when, but we’ll say it anyway: make sure your staff member knows when the project is due and where it falls relative to her other priorities. Over and over again, we see managers who delegate a project without being explicit about the due date, expecting it to be finished or at least well under way a week later, and then check back in and discover that the staffer hasn’t started it yet. Again, it comes down to being clear about your expectations: state the timeline you expect and how the work fits with other priorities.
It’s okay to leave the timing up to the staffer, but be specific about any qualifiers attached to that. You might say something like, “There’s no rush for this, so it’s fine to do it as time allows, but it should be wrapped up by August. This isn’t as important as the memo for the board, so you can turn to it after that.” You can also make this part very much a conversation by asking your staff member when she thinks it would be reasonable to have the work done and how she sees it fitting in with her other priorities.
Where Might the Staff Member Go for Resources?
What money, people, supplies, and other tools can your staff member use? Is there a rough budget for the project? Are there other people with expertise on this issue to whom she might turn (you might capture these people within the MOCHA as those who are consulted or helpers).
Within that list, one of the most valuable resources you can offer your staff is your own time. Make it clear that staffers can approach you to clarify expectations, answer questions, review progress, and help brainstorm solutions. In doing this, make sure that they maintain ownership of the project, so a staffer can say, “I’m wrestling with X. The best solution I can come up with is ABC, but I worry that it’s not the most cost-effective approach. Do you have any suggestions about other options I might consider? ” Staffers shouldn’t say, “I’m stuck on X. What should I do?”
Why Does This Work Matter?
Finally, both of us have been guilty of giving assignments in a hurry without explaining where the project is coming from and why it matters, and even why we’ve chosen to give it to the person we’re asking to handle it. We’ve both also gotten reasonably good outcomes at times when we have skipped this step, but each time we do it well, we’ve been struck by how much more excitement and buy-in we’ve seen when we communicate the why of a project as staff members go from compliance to commitment. For instance, if you’re asking your assistant to handle the logistics for an upcoming funder visit to your office, you might remind her that the funder has shown interest in the organization but hasn’t yet committed, that the funder in the past has been skeptical of grassroots organizations like yours so you want to make sure you look extra “on the ball,” and that your assistant did such a good job organizing the community dinner that you know she can make this visit a smashing success.
. . . And a Little Bit of How You Should Approach the Work
The standard line in management textbooks is that if you have good people, you shouldn’t need to tell them how to do everything. This is largely true, and by being clear with your staff about what success looks like, you’re freeing them up to think about how to get there.
That said, if you have input about the project, you should give it to your staff member on the front end. There are few things more frustrating for staff members than putting the effort in figuring out something you already knew. If you know from experience that having a Web site vendor in a different city has been a nightmare in the past, don’t hesitate to tell your head of communications that.
Similarly, make sure you mention any constraints that the staff member should be aware of. These might be constraints around the process (such as who needs to sign off on an item before it goes out the door) or the substance (such as items to include in the budget). For instance, in the Web design example, you might ask your staff member to submit draft design options to the head of development before she makes a final recommendation (a process constraint). You might also indicate that the organization’s logo must appear on every page (a substantive constraint).
Agreeing on How to Move Forward
Once you’ve shared your expectations for the project, the final step in the expectations stage is to make sure your staff member understands the assignment and, where relevant, creates a plan of attack.
The repeat-back.
As we mentioned earlier, time and time again we see managers who think they have been crystal clear about their expectations and then are shocked to discover that their staff members heard something very different. We’re often reminded of the children’s game of telephone, where a whispered message gets passed from person to person and comes out humorously different at the end than it was at the beginning.
The best way to prevent this telephone syndrome and to be sure your staff member understands the project the way you do is simple: ask. That is, find a way to get your staff member to repeat back to you what she has taken the assignment to be. In simple cases, the repeat-back might be verbal. Before ending a discussion about an assignment, you might simply say, “So, just to make sure we’re on the same page, can you tell me what you’re taking away from this?” When an assignment is more complicated or will take more than a day or two to complete, you might ask the staff member to send you a brief e-mail summarizing the assignment, including expected outcomes and next steps—for example:
Hi Jenny,
Here’s what I took from our discussion about the memo for the field volunteers:
Should include targets (and rationale)
Should be short (fewer than 3 pages)
Could be like the health care memo from last month
Deadline: out the door next Friday; I’ll send you an outline this Friday
Let me know if I’m missing anything here. Thanks—
Alice
Thi
s might feel awkward at first, but you can even blame your own fallibility by saying something like, “I know I’m not always as clear as I think I am, so just to make sure there’s nothing lost in translation, can you take five minutes to capture what we’ve agreed to here and e-mail it back to me, so we both have down what we’ve agreed to?” Almost invariably, in looking back over the e-mail, you’ll find one or two details where you and the staff member weren’t aligned.
The plan.
The quick verbal summary and the five-minute e-mail are less formal versions of what can become a more extensive plan on more complicated projects. The level of detail will vary from situation to situation, but the basic ingredients of any plan include the key activities needed to reach the desired outcomes, a timeline for when those activities will occur, and who is responsible for each step. In other words, plans should spell out who will do what by when.
AVOID THE GAME OF TELEPHONE WITH THE REPEAT-BACK
A simple, “Can you tell me what you’re taking away?” can help to ensure that you and the staff member are in agreement on what needs to be done before she spends hours on something that doesn’t line up with what you have in mind.
For complex projects, ask your staff member to create a written plan that will be the staff member’s tool for juggling the work’s many pieces; it should include information about each step, interim deadlines, and notes on MOCHA-type stakeholders. For instance, if your staff member is organizing a conference, the plan would cover steps associated with choosing the venue, designing and printing invitations, developing the agenda, and confirming speakers. The plan should be in a format that is easy to update, since your staff member will likely be making small adjustments to those interim deadlines as the work progresses. Because this sort of planning requires your staff member to think through each step and plan backward, she may spot early steps (like securing a venue) that could otherwise have slipped until too late.
While your staff members should take the lead in proposing the plan, as the manager you should ensure that it’s realistic and as comprehensive as it needs to be. This might mean asking questions about the plan (“Is it really possible for you to go from mock-ups of the Web pages to having the pages coded within two weeks as you’ve proposed?”) and making recommendations based on your expertise and experience (“I worked with vendors on a Web site remotely once, and it was a disaster. You might think about finding someone you could easily meet with in person”). Don’t be shy about playing the role of skeptic, pushing against the plan and the results to date to help the staff member refine the plan. The ideal outcome is a plan that is better than either you or your staff member might have developed on your own. Tool 2.2 provides a sample project plan.
Step 2: Stay Engaged
Now that you and your staff member have gotten crystal clear about what you expect, you’re done, right? Not if you care about results. Time after time, we see managers who think they have been totally clear about what they expect end up surprised by the implementation gap, where what happens in practice looks very different from what they expected. That’s because the most common way managers fail at delegating is by not staying involved to check on progress.
You can avoid the implementation gap by continuing to engage with your staff during the course of the work, getting a sense of how the work is proceeding, and making sure that tasks are either completed according to plan or that the plan is adapted as needed. Managers sometimes feel awkward about doing this, but you can be direct with your staff. Tell them that you’re hoping to check in on things along the way, both to see how things are going so you can help them avoid any implementation gap and so that you can serve as a better resource to them.
There are a lot of ways to ensure your staff is making progress, but four of the most powerful are checking in with staff directly, reviewing interim work, reviewing data, and seeing the work for yourself firsthand.
Checking In with Staff Directly
Checking in can be done by e-mail, phone calls, or in-person conversations, including regular weekly meetings, meetings on specific topics, and quick stop-bys to see how things are going.
Regardless of the exact forum, in addition to being helpful on whatever issues your staff member might raise, your job is to ask probing questions that get beneath the surface to make sure that work is on track. For instance, in preparing for an upcoming conference, rather than simply asking, “So, is everything going okay?” and receiving a yes answer, you might ask your staff to review progress against the plan, discuss steps around a particularly tough issue (“How are you approaching the issue of diversity on the panels?”), and report on the number of confirmed attendees and speakers.
In formulating these questions, think about what could go wrong, and probe around those areas in particular. Don’t let yourself assume things are proceeding smoothly; assume your job is to look for trouble, not to assume things are proceeding smoothly. You can do this in a tone that won’t make your staffer think that you lack confidence in her, and you might even quickly agree with her that you’re going to do it. For instance, you might say, “So I know we really want this to go smoothly. Can I ask you about some of the areas where I’ve seen events like this go wrong in the past?” Then you might ask questions like, “Do we know how the hotel will deal with malfunctioning equipment?” and “Is there anything we can do to be prepared to accommodate attendees with disabilities?” You could even ask, “What could go wrong? What’s your worst-case scenario?” and brainstorm about ways to address those possibilities.
PROJECT PLANNING: THE FOUR S’S
In creating a project plan, your staff members might think through the Four S’s:
1. Success: What are the desired outcomes of the project?
2. Streams: What are the main categories of work?
3. Steps: What are the specific, detailed steps that need to happen within each stream of the project?
4. Stakeholders: Who else needs to be involved, and how? Use MOCHA as a tool to think through who needs to be involved in what.
Reviewing a Slice of the Work
One pattern happens over and over: you assign a piece of writing, your staff member spends two weeks on it, and when it comes back to you, it’s not at all what you were picturing. Many managers think to ask for a draft in advance, but even at that stage, your staff member has put significant time into the project. A less common but very helpful technique here can be to ask to see a small sample of the whole before the person has put substantial energy into getting all the way through it. For instance, you might ask for a short segment of a document, an outline of an argument, or one page from the new Web design before the whole site is created. Or if you have an intern preparing references for a report, you might ask to see the first three citations to make sure the format she is using is correct. The basic idea is that just as you don’t need to eat a whole pie to know how it tastes, you can sample a small piece of the work to know whether it’s on track, and thereby save tremendous frustration down the road after your staff member has put significant energy into a more finished product.
Reviewing Data
Also ask to see regular reports with data indicating progress toward the desired outcome—for instance, a weekly report on progress toward a fundraising goal, a monthly chart showing Web site traffic compared to prior months, or a weekly list of targeted lawmakers and their positions on a pending piece of legislation. As part of delegating the work originally, you might think about what data will be meaningful to monitor along the way and how often, or even better, ask your staff member, “What data can we look at along the way to make sure this is on track?” so she can propose the best approach.
Seeing the Work Firsthand
A less common but extremely powerful way to see how things are going is to directly observe the work in action. Staff members might be completely forthright in reporting on progress, but managers often find that getting a feel for the actual work leads them to a much greater understand
ing of what is going on. For instance, joining your staff on a lobby visit, sitting in on a media training, attending a meeting with a prospective funder to hear your staff’s pitch, or observing a phone bank to see how volunteers deliver an agreed-on appeal can all offer valuable insights into how what is happening in reality compares to what was outlined in the plan.
When you’re managing work that’s executed outside the office (as opposed to, say, overseeing a team that is producing reports that you will see directly), seeing the work firsthand is particularly important. If your organization runs training programs, sit in on some of them. If you’re running a ballot initiative campaign in another state, make site visits to observe how the work is being run on the ground. One executive director we know started sitting in (with permission) on randomly selected calls between his head of regional operations and the organization’s regional staff. He was shocked to discover how different what was happening in the field was from what he had been assuming.
To explain to your staff member why you’re doing this, you might say something like, “I want to stay in touch with how all our grand plans are really playing out, so I’m going to be getting out into the field or on to your calls every once in a while to see how things are going in practice,” or “I want to stay in touch with how things are playing out in the field so I can be a better resource to you.”
