image by Matheus Van Lobatos, flickr artist

as i see it (that sounds familiar [looks at blog title] oh yeah!…), there’s one rule of management which trumps them all. it’s what i like to call “the frank sinatra rule.” it’s very simple.  it says: “if you’re going to delegate, be sure that you delegate all the way.” many managers struggle with this key capability. people in power want to have all the power, but share the responsibility.

quite frank-ly (see what i did there?) — that situation is hardly ever going to work.

when you delegate, there has got to also be a delegation of authority as well as responsibility. if you don’t empower those folks underneath of you to make their own decisions, then you’ve only come half-way. not to mention, from a strictly business and financial perspective, you’re paying someone many thousands of dollars to be a “deputy project manager” or “functional lead” when you could have saved that money and gotten yourself an administrative professional or intern at a far lesser cost to handle things like scheduling meetings and organizing status reports.

Read the rest of this entry »