Episode #569: Delegate Or Disappear In Business In Japan

They are not making as many Japanese as they used to. Every year we get these headlines about the new lows in numbers of births in Japan. The demographic trend is obvious to everyone. What is not obvious is how this is going to force a change in the way we lead. Until now, we have all applied the like it or lump philosophy to staff working for us. They were infinitely replaceable – lose one and go get another one. Not anymore.

It is hard to understand, really. The economy is not doing remarkably well. The prospects for future growth are also not looking great, so why is it we are not seeing a parallel step down in business needs which translates into less need for staff? I am not sure and I will let the economists duke that one out, but it is an interesting question to ponder.

We are certainly seeing an uptick in demand for people and a corresponding downturn in their availability. That translates into higher costs, which is only starting to happen now and increased competition for people. This isn’t only related to the hiring, it also covers the retaining bit as well. The recruiters are having a field day with the revenues being generated from us for hiring staff and there isn’t much we can do about that in a staff bull market.

What we can control is the retaining piece of the puzzle. Delegating work to staff is a critical part of that effort. Young people want to advance in their careers and they want to be given responsibility for their work. Delegation serves both purposes well. The issue with delegation is that when done poorly, it can lead to problems.

The biggest failure is selling the delegation to the person receiving it. This sounds simple, but so often this is not done at all or not done very professionally. Usually, the delegation process is a series of orders – do this and do that type of thing. The person on the receiving end already has a job and may be thinking, “wait a minute, I am already busy and why do I need to do your job as well?”. That would be a legitimate and logical conclusion of having your boss dump their work on your desk.

The selling component is making clear the benefit to the person receiving the delegation. There is usually a selection process for internal promotions and the people making the decision want to know the new person can handle the tasks and are not going to blow anything up. If we are changing companies, when we get to the interview stage, they will ask about our experience. We are trying to step up and being able to reference completion of work at a level above where we are now is an advantage. When it is put like this, people can understand how they can leverage these tasks at a future point and make it an advantage to themselves.

The other negative aspect of delegation is boss abandonment. You are handed a bunch of tasks by your superior and that is the last you hear about it until the completion deadline. This is very dangerous because if the person takes the project off on an incorrect tangent and you hit the deadline, then there is little which can be done to salvage the wreckage.

Now there is a balance between the boss interfering and micro-managing the delegated project and keeping an eye on how things are going. The latter is obviously the way to go, but where is the line between them? One good idea is to discuss how they are going to approach the task. Get them to tell us what they think about running this part of the work. We want their ideas because that is where the ownership is located. We still need to monitor progress, though.

Agreeing a regular check in is a good practice. All the boss is looking for is whether the project is on track. There are many ways to the top of the mountain and we have to let the delegated person find that out for themselves, as part of the learning process, rather than being proscriptive about how to get there.

If we get both the sell the delegation part and the shepherding component right, then the delegation will be successful and help us to retain staff. The team member will feel empowered, trusted, and valuable. These are all brilliant and required elements to keep people with us and not straying off to greener pastures. We must deny the siren call of ravenous recruiters trying to lift our people out of our companies. If we don’t start delegating, we will lose staff, find it hard to get new staff and gradually shrink in size. In turn, this will make us less attractive as a work destination, as we become too flat to be able to accommodate ambitious people. It is a cycle which ultimately leads to oblivion.