Delegation isn’t just a handoff so you can walk away and do something else. It is a critical leadership skill that you must master if you want to expand your reach, take control of your time and achieve the work-life harmony you’re seeking.
Learn the 8 Principles of Effective Delegation.
How often have you wondered why a project went wrong, or why someone never finished the task you were counting on them to finish?
How many times have you complained about projects that you’re managing … missing their deadlines, going over budget (not under budget very often, huh?) and not getting done as you expected?
How did you feel when you were called on the carpet by YOUR boss wanting to know why the project you’re handling is stalled?
When we’ve delegated some or all of a project to someone else, we’re embarrassed … and probably a little teed off … but we’re also too often thinking about the wrong things like …, “damn that John, he just can’t be counted on” … or, “she doesn’t get it” … or something like, “they can’t ever seem to follow through” as we tick off all the reasons why the people on our team have let us down.
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Winston Churchill could have been an entrepreneur to have so eloquently dramatized the thrill associated with building a business.
Whether you own it yourself or share it with partners, it’s yours to build, to mold according to your dreams and values.
You may be building it from scratch or seeking new opportunities to jumpstart a mature company. In either case, I hope this will help you on your journey.
Why do you have your own business?
Independence, many will say, the chance to run my own show?
Be my own boss?
Do things my way – maybe because you’ve seen them done the wrong way and you can do better?
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“It’s not the will to win that matters, everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.” ~ Paul “Bear” Bryant
Many moons ago when my daughter was 3 years old, she really wanted a Barbie dollhouse for Christ
mas. She never played with Barbie dolls … never liked them much either … but she loved all the little people and things in that doll house. We found one and hid it in the attic to await Christmas Eve when we could sneak it under the Christmas tree.
My wife and I went up to the attic around 10 p.m. that evening and it was only then when I noticed the small print on the side of the large box … “less than 500 pieces.”
What? 500 pieces? To assemble? At this hour? Alas, yes … and man, was it painful to have to stay up until 3 a.m. putting it together. How’s that for preparation?
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“Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future.” — Peter Drucker
If the execution of a company’s plans is an avowed priority, critical to the success of both the CEO and the business, why aren’t CEOs spending enough time on it to make it successful?
Why is it that every time the Conference Board surveys CEOs to identify their Top Ten Challenges, “consistent execution of strategy” or “excellence in execution” is invariably cited as being in the top two or three “greatest concerns” … yet, when CEOs are asked about their greatest disappointments or failures, they routinely list their company’s inability to execute?
Huh? How is it that a subject among the top three goals of most CEOs is the very one where the CEO has the least amount of success? Is this simply a conundrum tucked inside a mystery hidden inside an enigma … or can we sort out some of this ambiguity?
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Déjà vu all over again?
How often have you heard that phrase banging against your skull … and how often was it telling you … “I’ve been here before” … “Didn’t we already solve this problem?” … “Why does this subject keep coming up all the time?”
Late last year, I embarked on a retrospective of my first 100 newspaper columns from the last four years. You may recall that I emphasized how often so many of those issues continue to be the same challenges year after year.
They’re constantly resurfacing, often in disguise as a different issue altogether … but really, the same ‘ol, same ‘ol.
I promised you then that we would attack the litany of reasons that these same issues keep popping up like whack-a-moles. I don’t think we’ve gotten “dumb and dumberer,” so what’s going on? Why are we tackling the same problems over and over again?
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For most of us, this is the time of the year when hope springs eternal. We’re revved up for an exciting new year, determined to change all of the things that didn’t work last year so we can pound the ball out of the park in 2012.
Nothing wrong with any of that. Commitment, momentum, focus … these are the energies that will fuel our engine and help us jumpstart 2012 with the vigor and rigor that we need to make this year the most successful ever.
Yet, like most New Year’s resolutions we’ve made, the “gum loses its flavor on the bedpost overnight”.
We soon discover that it’s much easier to start than to finish.
We struggle to keep the engine stoked with the same energy that propelled us into the New Year.
We begin to feel some of the air already coming out of the tires, and begin to wonder … “where did that new-found energy go”?
It comes back to that whimpering sound of “hope springs eternal.”
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Every Tuesday, we’re sharing valuable and practical leadership tips and tools to help you BE a better leader so you can BECOME a better leader. Remember … you won’t BECOME a better leader until you start BEING a better leader … implementing NOW the changes necessary to adopt the proven strategies of successful leaders. You might start by building on the communication matrix and making sure you’re defending the castle to get done what only you can do. Make sure to take some time so you’re thinking past today. Don’t forget our 12 part Leadership series.
Do it quickly, don’t look back … and move onRemember how Mom used to say: “You know better than that?”
It wasn’t that we were ignorant or unaware of what was supposed to be done. Quite the contrary. We knew damn well what we were supposed to do but we just didn’t want to do it. Why not?
That’s the eternal conundrum, isn’t it my friends? Why don’t we do what we know we must do?
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Every Thursday, I’m sharing a new Personal Productivity Tip to help you get more done. Each Productivity Tip is a remarkably simple tool or concept that can be quickly implemented to make a real difference in your personal productivity. When you apply many of them together, they’ll make a big difference in improving productivity, achieving accountability and staying focused on the things that matter the most in your life.
You may want to check out some of the posts in this Productivity series, including the the value of checklists; the importance of getting rid of the crappy stuff; the nightmare of the cluttered mind; and that feeling of being buried all the time. You can also leverage your resources and apply the lessons of the ARCI chart and the S.M.A.R.T. goals to boost the accountability of your entire organization.
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By now, some of you have seen the latest Harvard Business Review with this cover.
I don’t think a day goes by when we’re not pondering how to get more done. The Being More Productive article is an interview with David Allen of GTD fame and Tony Schwartz at The Energy Project, who leads a growing movement concentrating on optimizing and renewing our energy to become more productive.
In fact, the first thing you see when you visit the home page of The Energy Project is a statistic that we all know: 72% of people have trouble focusing on one thing at a time, something we covered in Are Distractions Destroying Your Brain? I doubt that it’s really that low.
There are several articles in this guide, as you can see from the quick snapshot.
Take a look at some of these articles and let me know what you think? Any tips there that are working for you … or is it all just old news?
I’d answer that question myself … but I think I’m a little overdue for my nap.
Every Thursday, I’m sharing a new Personal Productivity Tip to help you get more done. Each Productivity Tip is a remarkably simple tool or concept that can be quickly implemented to make a real difference in your personal productivity. When you apply many of them together, they’ll make a big difference in improving productivity, achieving accountability and staying focused on the things that matter the most in your life.
You may want to check out some of the posts in this Productivity series, including the the value of checklists; the importance of getting rid of the crappy stuff; the nightmare of the cluttered mind; and that feeling of being buried all the time. You can also leverage your resources and apply the lessons of the ARCI chart and the S.M.A.R.T. goals to boost the accountability of your entire organization.
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Don’t we all know there are many tasks or projects that require us to wait for something else to get done first … or for someone else to get something done before we can continue?
We know that “waiting for” stuff is a critical piece of our personal productivity program because it’s the linchpin of the critical “follow up” that we must always be doing.
So, that part is pretty obvious. But, have you ever prioritized your tasks to make sure that you’re taking account of the “elapsed time” that something requires? Here’s the simple hierarchy I try to use. See if it makes sense to you.
If you can get it done in 2 minutes, do it, get it over with, move on. I think we all know this one.
Here’s a simple example of how this works.
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Welcome to Exkalibur. I’m Lary Kirchenbauer, President of Exkalibur Advisors, Inc. Please take advantage of our resources to help you build your business ... and let me know what more we can do to serve you.
Read my latest column from the NY Times affiliate, the North Bay Business Journal.
We have a great management team that has built a very successful company. At an important crossroads, we needed more expertise on an expanded list of financial issues than we could provide ourselves. Lary brought that expertise, providing the depth of knowledge and experience that helped us develop and implement a practical solution.
Gary Imm, CEO (retired).
