Delegate Effectively
Two key frameworks help leaders determine when and how to delegate by balancing delegation, monitoring, and doing it yourself.
Tool Summary
To focus your time on the most valuable work, you need to prioritize and delegate. The Consequence-Conviction Matrix presented by Keith Rabois in Sam Altman’s ‘How to Start a Startup’ lecture series at Stanford helps to asses what to delegate without abdication or micromanagement based on conviction and consequence.
The first dimension is conviction or the strength of your opinions or beliefs about something. The second dimension is the level of consequence or the risks involved in someone else doing the work. These two dimensions help to determine what tasks should be delegated.
The Consequence-Conviction Matrix stems from Task-Relevant Maturity (TRM) model coined by Andy Grove in his book High Output Management. TRM compares the importance and urgency of a task to someone’s maturity or skill to do the task.
Highly important or urgent tasks can be delegated to skilled employees and monitored or should be done yourself. While tasks with low urgency and importance can be delegated to skilled employees or delegated and monitored to non-skilled employees.
Combined these two help to determine when and how to delegate work.
How to Apply
Ask yourself the following three questions when determining when and how to delegate:
Step 1 - What is your level of conviction about a decision (low or high)?
How strongly do you believe you know the right way to do the work?
How accepting are you of various paths or methods to complete the work?
Step 2 - What is the level of consequence in how the work is executed or what is the degree of risk (low or high)?
What is the impact if a mistake is made?
How risky or important is the work and desired result?
Step 3 - What is the skill and will of your team members who could complete the work (low or high)?
What is their skill level in the task at hand? What is their potential to be successful?
How bought in are they to complete the work?
After answering these questions you need to determine the level at which you want to:
Delegate the work to others vs. do it yourself
Monitor progress vs. delegate it fully
The lower the skill level the more you need to monitor or do it yourself. In low conviction/ risk moments, you can monitor or developmentally delegate and in high conviction/ risks moments, you do it yourself.
The higher the skill level the more you need to delegate fully or delegate and monitor. Here you delegate fully when there is low conviction/ risk.
When there is high conviction, risk, or importance you need to strike a delicate balance between delegate and monitor. This is a challenging space because you want to delegate fully to highly skilled team members so they feel empowered. Ideally, the skill of your team members lowers the risk.
If your conviction, the risk, or the importance outweighs the skill of your team members- consider if the skill is low enough you should do it yourself. If not, you will want to utilize monitoring and reporting, enough that you are confident the most important work is done well, but not so much that you disempower your team members.
Your decision is more of a scale than a binary point. Be thoughtful of the balance between the motivation and engagement of your team members with your need to monitor, report, or do it yourself.
Measuring Results
The goal of proper delegation is for the right people to do the right work to make the highest impact. If done correctly:
You should have time to focus on the most important work
Your skilled team members should feel trusted and autonomous
Less skilled team members should have opportunities to develop and grow their skills
Your conviction and the consequences of work should be clearly communicated
There is safe space for risks and mistakes
Monitoring and reporting should be valuable tools
Sources
Grove, A. S. (1983). High output management. Chapters 3, 4, 9, 11, 13, 14, Souvenir Press.
Rabois, K. (n.d.). How to Operate. Sam Altman, How to Start a Startup. Stanford University. Retrieved from http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec14/.
