KENNETH BLANCHARD ON DELEGATING DECISIONS TO FRONT-LINE STAFF
Use this to remind you that front-line staff may be in a position to make better decisions than you.
Kenneth Blanchard (b. 1939) is a management expert and writer, famous for his work on the One Minute Manager series of books. He also has an interest in decision making and advocates pushing the responsibility for making business decisions down to the lowest possible level:
If you want people on the front lines … to be responsible for making decisions they must be given the same information that managers use to make good business decisions.
Kenneth Blanchard
I fully agree with the sentiments behind the above quotation. However, I disagree with the idea that front-line staff should have the same information as managers. Managers work off summarised information and, the more senior the manager, the shorter the briefing note. This is because senior managers have to deal with issues from across the organisation and can’t spend time reading detailed reports on, say, the problems with packaging. On the other hand, the manager of the packing department is likely to have a great deal of detailed information about what the problem is and possible solutions. In effect, the packing manager has richer information than any senior manager. If they don’t, they aren’t doing their job.
WHAT TO DO
- Always delegate decisions down to the lowest possible level in the organisation, be that a manager, supervisor or individual member of staff. Sometimes, decisions are too important or complex to delegate, but the Pareto Principle (see Quotation 55) tells us that over 80 per cent can be safely delegated.
- Inform everyone who has the power to make a decision of the limits of their discretion. For example, the packaging manager can make all decisions under £44,999; decisions between £50,000 and £149,999 will need to be countersigned by the packing manager’s boss; and decisions over £150,000 must be referred to X along with the packaging manager’s recommendation for approval.
- Do a training needs analysis (see Quotation 15) and provide training for any manager whose knowledge of decision-making techniques is weak, e.g. poor understanding of discounted cash flow.
- In conjunction with each decision maker, identify what regular reports they need from finance, production, sales, etc. in order to do their job. Also make clear to those who produce these reports that they may be required by managers to turn out ad hoc reports when required. Such requests are to be treated as important and not left on the back burner.
- No one should be hung out to dry for making a bad decision. Robert Townsend (Quotation 49) said that a good manager gets 33 per cent of decisions right, 33 per cent wrong and for the rest it doesn’t matter what you decided; things would have turned out just the same. So we all make mistakes and, with luck, learn from them. If you castigate staff for making an honest mistake, word will quickly get round and staff will start referring decisions up the line.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
- Do I worry about delegating decisions to staff?
- Do I dump work on staff rather than delegate it?