Episode #266: Delegation In Business In Japan

We know that delegating tasks is important but we have tried it in the past and found it didn’t work well, so we have given up on it. Why didn’t it work well? This usually because of the way we do the delegation. We just dump the task on someone and tell them when we want it, as we gracefully slide off into the mist. We turn up at the designated production point to find it hasn’t been done or has errors or has been taken off on a complete different direction to what we expected. The timing means it is too late or panic stations to try and fix it by the deadline. We blame “delegation” the process rather than ourselves.

So we start saying dumb things to ourselves like “it would be faster if I do it myself”. We do this because we don’t want to invest the time in teaching someone else how they should be doing it. This is a big mistake because if we keep doing it this way we will never be able to delegate anything. There is a big opportunity cost here, because we can’t free up the time we need to work on the high level things that only we can work on.

Just dumping work on others builds resentment. Clever people have worked out that if they do a poor job they can’t be fired in Japan and the boss will buy back the delegation and they will never have to worry about a recurrence. If you ask Japanese people to write out their job description they will get in on to a postage stamp. The reason is because they want to reduce their work responsibily down to the smallest possible scope. They are highly risk averse and the less scope of responsibility the less chance of having any egg wind up on their faces. Pretty smart really.

Then we turn up with our shin idea to give them more work. They think they are too busy already and don't have any bandwidth for more tasks. Also, you are expanding their risk circle rather than reducing it. From their point of view there is nothing to like about doing tasks which are the bosses responsibility rather than theirs.

Okay, so how should we do delegation then? We need to persuade people to do it willingly. The first step is to match the task with the person rather than matching it with whoever doesn’t look that busy that day. Next we need to sell the idea to them. We have to speak in terms of what is the benefit tot hem. It is hard to move up the ranks usually because we lack experience at the next level we are among for. Delegation is an excellent way to get the notches in your belt through practical experience of doing tasks at the boss’s level. When we get to the job interview stage we can talk about the fact hat we have been completely tasks at the boss level already, so we are sure we can do the job.

We need them to lead the planning on how to do the project. We own the world we help to crate so let them create the plan of execution. Of course we can help but it shouldn’t be our plan rammed down their throat. They may actually have a better way of doing it than what we had thought of.

Let them run with it but check on the way through. There is a fine line here with micro managing, but we have to be careful to keep the responsibility with them. We need to check it is on track with what we agreed and that is all we should be doing. Let them do it. Finally, we celebrate their successful completion of the project.