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Delegating Responsibility

As a CEO, your to-do list has the potential to grow infinitely longer, no matter how many items you cross off.

You've made the discovery that there's never enough time left at the end of the day to finish everything. What can you do?

It’s not a personal problem. Your company's future depends on you. You must drive your organization beyond its current plateau. The secret is in changing the way you relate to your work. First consider the three stages to making the transition from chief cook-and-bottle-washer to being the source of the management and direction of the business: understanding and focusing on your highest value contribution to your company, recognizing your position as a leader and owning the job, and delegating everything else and holding others accountable. This article will focus on the last stage.

The Delegating Issue

Without a doubt, you’ve concluded that your next level of company performance requires a managerial change, and hopefully you’ve realized that you have to make the changes. As CEO, your job includes holding the vision, inspiring senior management and your staff, and fostering key relationships with customers, vendors, investors, and the public.

This means you have to let go of some cherished activities like product design, hiring, and day-to-day sales. You have to relinquish many of the things you handled in the past, perhaps out of necessity, and focus on your role as CEO. You must delegate all those things you used to do. While you might be available for advice, assign the work to competent staff members. You must even delegate those important things you know you could do better, not just the routine tasks.

Your Highest Value Contribution

Consider your highest value contribution to your company. Which of your activities generates the most revenue, profit, and market share? Where do you get the most return on investment? Like most CEOs, your greatest leverage is in mobilizing the forces around you, including your senior staff and other employees, plus key customers, prospects, and vendors. Everything else is secondary in terms of impact. As a result, you have to give away anything else, even those things you are the best at. Then you should make sure they are done right, up to specs and delivered on time.

The Cost of Holding On

The thorny part is that many executives refrain from delegating those responsibilities that they label “critical.” They are afraid that the job won't be done correctly, or that no one else can do it as quickly as they can and deliver it on time. They fear that the right attention to detail won't be paid. Or they fear something else.

But you have to give it up! The growth of your company will be stifled to the extent that you hold on to these critical tasks. Your company will suffer exactly in those areas where you think you are the expert!

Product design? You’ll be away at a customer meeting and hold up the development of a key component. Staffing? You’re out of town meeting with investment bankers, and two engineers can't be hired because you aren’t there to sign off on the paperwork. Sales? You’re in Asia meeting with a vendor, and negotiations on an important deal get bogged down.

If you feel you have to be involved in everything, you become the choke point on these vital functions. No, you don't have to be involved. To the degree that you have not developed your staff to assume these responsibilities, the growth of your company will be impeded.

Apart from the fear that the job won't be done right, there is another, more insidious reason that CEOs don’t delegate. They feel that if they aren't doing the “important” stuff, they become redundant. Dead weight, or unnecessary overhead. If you have a great vice president of sales or chief technologist, what will you do?

You will feel this way if you haven't completed transitions one and two. You don’t yet understand how you personally create value in your company and you haven't yet fully assumed the role of leader. Once you make these transitions, you won't have time for the other important things. It’s delegation, not abdication.

Many executives delegate by saying something like, “Bill, would you do this project? It has to be done by next Friday. Thanks.” And that's it. When the job doesn’t get done by Friday, they are infuriated. Why? They forgot accountability. They failed to set up the structure for making sure that the job would go according to plan.