CHAPTER 21

To Grow Try This… Delegation and Controls

Scarily everything you have read so far is but a warm-up to the main event of Delegation and Controls and what leads from that delegation. Getting that right is everything that stands between you and a bigger, brighter future.

We want to help you make some foundational changes in your business that will set you up for identifying and then implementing the growth opportunities—your Plateau Busters! This section may at first seem somewhat radical, but once you put some of these suggestions into action, you will probably be impressed with how they work for you. And yes, it’s all your work, we are merely shining light on the paths ahead and guiding you toward the best of those paths available to you. You will need to do all of the hard work of this journey to the next level on your organization’s growth trajectory.

We asked you a few pages ago: “What is the next natural step-change in your business: 20 percent more or 200 percent more over the next 5 years?” We also asked you near the beginning of this book: “What your greatest asset is?”

We suspect you, yourself, might be the greatest asset, and invariably if you intend to grow, and particularly if you go for the more aggressive growth ambition, you’ll need to consider your span of control. We human beings seem to wrongly think control and chaos are opposites—such that if you let go of control, it will be chaos.

Try This…Grow Span of Control

It can simply be that you don’t want to let go. Let’s not label you as a control freak because you’re not. Let’s instead recognize that actually it’s your money in play and you should rightfully be connected overwhelmingly with decisions to be made with it. Or is it? Do you have other shareholders and, if so, are their interests best served by your unwillingness to delegate? Because that’s what it amounts to—a business ceiling imposed by the maximum span of control you can (or at least seek to) exercise. You run a tight ship because…

We need control in our lives because nobody likes to pay for something they haven’t had. A restaurant check with an extra dish or bottle of wine either not ordered or never received is sent back with annoyance. Annoyance of it having to be checked and found wanting, annoyance that it is a less than perfect end to what should have been an enjoyable occasion.

With that simple thought in mind, we would guess, in your business, if it is like almost all others, cash is not in bountiful supply and therefore you like to make sure only correct purchase invoices are paid and so on. We imagine you operationally do this because it is still you that cut the checks or at least signs them if you are not already doing similarly electronically.

So how do you know they are correct? Our guess is you look at the invoice and think “Oh yes, I remember that batch of widget castings being delivered.” And therein lies the problem.

Give the person nearest the receiving bay a rubber stamp—or the electronic equivalent—that says Received and checked…and ask that they apply the stamp and their signature to every delivery note received. Then come payment time, pay invoices with matching-stamped delivery notes and query the ones without. It should go without saying that the task is not simply signing their name, but to check that the goods delivered agree with the documentation and that their signature is evidence of that fact.

So suddenly you have delegated a responsibility and installed a control to make sure it happens. Whilst with any delegation there is a risk of short-cutting or cheating, the signatory will know their job is dependent on doing this and not be found wanting. And in any event, until you are a much larger organization, you are almost certainly going to observe this operative performing this task from time to time—probably because you will find yourself in the receiving area from time to time on some other mission.

If you can do it for deliveries, you can do it for sales. In fact, you probably do already. Somebody, and it’s not you, already ticks off each customer’s packing list so that what is dispatched from your premises matches what you bill the customer for. Depending on values and complexity, you might well have separate pickers of customer orders (from your warehouse) and packers who check the order as part of preparing it for dispatch. Initials on internal paperwork will confirm these actions and by whom.

The chances are, notwithstanding our earlier suggestions about hiring salespeople, is it still you who handles all the new sales enquiries? Is that really about personal service, only you with the required knowledge and only you who can make key pricing decisions or again is it simply that you have not delegated some of this? Why not define the rules (= control) and allow other people to handle some of the sales enquiries? The rules can set maximum discounts, credit checking, the contact cycle, and follow-up, and the exceptional criteria where sales leads must be referred to you.

Certainly, the discipline of following up on an enquiry—say a first reply within one hour, the offering of online or physical sales collateral, booking a sales appointment, further follow-up calls to a longer timescale—is, in all honesty, better done by someone else. Someone who doesn’t have all the other issues you have in front of you every day that stop you sticking to your rules. To do that effectively, the delegatee will need to maintain a log of activities and hey! Suddenly you have a control tool too.

If you are worried your salesperson is going to give each new enquiry maximum discount, the choice is yours. Either make them refer each enquiry to you and duplicate the manpower involved, or make part of their remuneration a commission based on margin. The latter will ensure they are as keen as you are that proper pricing is upheld.

Try This…Develop Accountable Catchers

Throwing a ball at people who can’t catch results in a lot of balls on the floor. You probably still have some balls on the floor from the last time you tried to delegate in a meaningful way. This time it will be different as you’ll also develop your team’s catching skills—by that we mean accountability.

If accountability is dropping in your workplace, it’s likely because people are being underchallenged. You may be delegating less and less from a concern that employees’ jobs are too big? Reverse this and delegate more to develop your employees but at the same time provide feedback and mentoring.

Resist the urge to protect people from natural consequences. People’s choices and the consequences should be made visible and undiluted without drama. After an employee gets data from reality, you can be ready to jump in with factual feedback and assistance with corrective action, if needed.

Provide feedback, as factually and unemotionally as possible. Just a few sentences. If the feedback goes beyond a simple observation of the facts, you’re going to invoke the employee’s ego, which in turn encourages self-defensiveness, resistance, and blaming others.

Feedback short, self-reflection long. Briefly report what you see, and quickly hand over responsibility for self-reflection and associated improvement to whom it belongs to—the employee.

Then add an assignment to prompt this action—see questions below—and set a date for a future conversation about what the employee discovers. The key focus is not the feedback, but for you to inspire self-reflection.

Self-reflection comes from a place of seeking truth, leading to inner discovery rather than trying to force it through external pressure from you or others. You can fuel this through great questions and simple assignments. Suggested paired reflection questions look like:

Corroborate self-reflection. After all this self-reflection, the employee will be tempted to find a colleague to verify their situation—maybe seeking an empathetic ear. Ideally that supportive ear needs to have been through this approach beforehand and thus not allow self-pity or drama— just the facts. Soon, your pool of employees that have experienced this process will demonstrate accountability themselves and encourage their colleagues toward the same.

Try This…Vacation

Vacation time is precious, that’s why you plan it out in some detail—an investment in your time to ensure when the vacation arrives you make the best use of that time. But there’s no point in planning a vacation that you can’t take—because the business is too important and needs your constant attendance.

Wrong! Wrong for so many reasons. If the business is going to collapse because of a short absence on your part, it can’t be much of a business. Ponder this for a second, because should you to want to sell it, the truth is there’s no business without you, and therefore no likelihood of a sale.

The extra effort is the work involved in setting up the controls around delegation and helping your employees become accountable. The next piece of the jigsaw here is about overcoming your fear of letting go.

Think about it. How much more effort is it to set up a system—equals control and accountability—as opposed to all the briefings and notes you would have to give and make anyway for your staff if you were going to go away for a planned week or two off? And of course with systems in place, your next absence after this one is already catered for.

The prospect of a vacation could be the stimulus you need to begin this process. Start on the delegation route today as a test. You are still on site, so you can monitor the effect of any delegation, related controls, and accountability, making changes if necessary. When tuned and you are happy that it works well with you present, then we think there is a sporting chance it will work well when you are on that long overdue vacation.

This happened in a coffee business one of the authors was involved in. The owner, happy the controls were working, announced a faraway vacation for himself. He refused to give any contact details, telling the staff they had the tools, authority, and importantly competence to deal with anything that might arise in his absence! “But what if the place burns down?” queried one. “I’m sure you’ll deal with it,” replied the owner.

It didn’t burn.

And there is a valuable side-effect. Staff can react very positively to the award of responsibility, in terms of personal esteem but also in their commitment to your business—someone else who cares about your business—as promised in the first paragraph of stop-what if…it’s your people? A true win–win.

Try This…Captain in Charge?

Ever been on a cruise ship? The two expected answers are yes and not yet. But you know the form because even if not yet, you’ve seen the movies, adverts, and documentaries. Here we are discussing food service on board. We’d all like to think the chef and maître d’ sit down the night before and plan the next day’s dining room menus. But wrong! They are determined months ahead in head office. The same place determines portion size and anticipates guest numbers, and clever computers guess what the guests will choose from the menus. This allows supplies to be ordered in the right quantities and delivered to the right dock on the right day, way ahead of time.

At dockside, the actual delivery is matched to the order by the food and beverage controller, who on board is the one who issues the anticipated number of steaks and so on to the chef—who naturally signs for them. Later the same controller looks at plates coming back from the dining room to see what’s been left by the guests. Clearly if not there, the food has been enjoyed, whilst if still there in quantity, the controller will tell head office and have the computer in the future switch broccoli for asparagus and so on.

OK, you are not running a cruise ship. But you are forward planning, you are seeking to avoid waste, and we hope you are reacting to customer feedback. You will also see from the above illustration that the captain of the ship has nothing to do with the whole process—it is delegated and controlled for him. So why is this not the same for you? If what you do has a method, delegate someone to run it. Ensure there are controls so that if for instance a vital component is running out, an alert mechanism doesn’t just report that to you, but also efficiently reorders it without your intervention. It should also tell you about the reorder—then you can sleep more peacefully at night. But in both cases it is to tell you, not ask you, otherwise much of the efficiency is lost.

Please pause here for a moment. We bet there’s a long list of questions you are currently asked in your business. Which of these, after appropriate training and putting systems in place, could be mere FYI updates to you, versus still requiring an answer from you, as they do at present?

Beware though of customer feedback, not received directly. In a software company, one of the authors received feedback only via the sales director. According to the director, there was a lot of demand for new features X, Y, and Z and all the prospects were holding off for feature W. When challenged, a lot was one prospect and all was two!

Pause: Did you make notes of things in the Action This Today section in the back of this book? If not, please take this opportunity to review the prior pages to identify again any thoughts and ideas you want to follow up on.