Achieving Fast Results with Delegation

In today's world, we are rushing for more and more deliverables. And in this environment we keep pushing our people. As a result, they (and we ourselves) are feeling exhausted, drained of energy and are getting close to burning out.

What is a better, alternative approach? Delegate decision-making, give more autonomy and let go of control. This means, establishing a Self-Managed Organisation. This sounds difficult, how are we actually supposed to go about this?

An environment for Self-Managed Organisations does not happen by itself. As a leader, we need to put various elements in place for a successful transition that is facilitating the change; a change in our people, and a change in how we are leading them. These elements are a set of principles, consistent leadership behaviour, a different perspective, common goals, the right capabilities, and a supportive structure. Let's dive into these.

The starting point is a solid set of principles and values. One might argue that good values are universal. Though, every organisation is different and has a different starting point. It is important to identify which values are already deeply ingrained and which values are aspirational and necessary to develop for success.

Displaying the right leadership behaviour might be easy. In my experience, many well-meaning leaders fall back to old habits in tense situations. That is why practising these leadership behaviours is important until they are consistent and a part of our second nature. And sometimes, we do need to learn new perspectives. For example a strong believe that everyone in the organisation has the desire and the capability to bring our company towards success. Not everyone has that perspective, and not everyone is guided into this direction.

Values, behaviours and perspectives are then the foundation for the direction. Maybe the most important element to build self-managed organisation is to establish collective, common goals. This means that everyone in the organisation has contributed to these and accepts them as their own. In our experience with our vision-to-action programs, we understand that the right targets have a huge impact on success and decision-making.

Every transition comes with a new set of capabilities - these might be functional or people skills. The first step is that your people have access to the right learning, knowledge and information. The second step is to cultivate a continuous learning environment based on scientific experimentation. This is based on transparency and openness.

The last step is to weave all this into your structure in the form of an organisation handbook. This artefact might include elements of what is your organisation about, how are we selecting and integrating people, how are we collaborating, how are we growing people, how are we resolving conflict... The handbook manifests the organisation culture and is a continuous reference point for people. A living document that is lived by.

The Self-Managed Organisation then allows you to delegate tasks, decisions, and delivery to the front. This means we are speeding up the way we work and we are enriching people's work. And at the same time, we are freeing up the time of the leadership teams to spend more time on strategy and building a healthy organisation.

What will you focus on first to change your teams?


Source: 5 Steps (and 9 Experiments) for a Successful Transition to a Self-Managing Organization