Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
PROFESIONALISME PEKERJAAN
KERTAS PENERANGAN
PROGRAM / PROGRAM
PROFESIONALISME PEKERJAAN
SEMESTER
SEMESTER 7
01 PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
05.04 : DELEGATE RESPONSIBILITIES AND/OR
AUTHORITY
KEBOLEHAN / ABILITIES
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PENERANGAN / INFORMATION:
1.
DEFINING DELEGATION
Delegation is not a task assignment. You're not simply assigning work to employees that falls
within their job duties and responsibilities. To delegate, you must give someone the
responsibility and authority to do something that's normally part of your job.
Delegation is not "dumping." If employees think you're merely throwing unpleasant assignments
on their lap, they'll resent having to find extra time for boring or dead-end projects.
Delegation is not abdication. You share accountability for the assignment. That's why you must
establish appropriate controls and checkpoints to monitor your employees' progress.
Your role is to set clear goals and expectations for the assignment including any boundaries or
criteria without telling the worker how to do it. This way, you allow others to discover for
themselves the best way to follow through.
Delegation involves three elements:
i) responsibility
ii) authority
iii) accountability
When you delegate, you distribute responsibility and authority to others while holding them
accountable for their performance. The ultimate accountability, however, still lies with you.
2.
LEARNING TO DELEGATE
The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch somebody else
doing it wrong, without comment. TH White
It is never a sign of weakness when a man in a high position delegates authority; on the contrary,
it is sign of his strength and of his capacity to deserve success. Walter Lippman
Most people vow that when they become a manager they will become good delegators. However,
when they reach the giddy heights of management they too often fail to carry out the promise.
Why is that so many managers are reluctant to delegate even the simplest of task? With few
exceptions, the reason is purely psychological, as illustrated by the following list:
i)
Assumed lack of ability of subordinates until you make yourself aware of strengths and
weakness of your staff, it is natural to assume that they lack the necessary skills.
ii) Its quicker to do it myself - in the short term, yes, but not in the long term. If a task takes
you in one hour each week, you could save yourself 45 to 50 hours a year by delegating it
to someone else.
iii) The manager enjoys the task until his recent retirement, the chairman and founder of a
haulage company in the south east of England always prepared the holiday schedule for
his 230 employees. Despites the attempts of his fellow directors, she could not be
persuaded to delegate this comparatively simple task. He enjoys doing it.
iv) The manager has always done it why? Is not to know the time for a change?
v) Reluctance to share knowledge after all, knowledge is power
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carry out
c) It transfers work to people whose skills in a particular area are better than yours, saving
time.
d) Transfer of responsibility develops your staff, and can increase their enjoyment of their
jobs
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Decide the task to be delegated. Preferably it should be a continuing task, not a one-off.
ii) Select the most appropriate member of your staff to delegate to. This will largely depend
upon the task.
iii) Check the existing workload of that staff member. You will not be thank I they thin that you
are dumping extra work on them. It may be necessary to delegate some of their work to
somebody else.
iv) Discuss your proposals with the person you have selected. Explain the task, its
importance and why you have chosen them. Get their agreement to take on the job.
v) Train the person until you are both happy that they can do the task
vi) Establish and agree a monitoring procedure
vii) Assign the necessary authority and responsibility with the task.
viii)
How far you can delegate jobs will depend on the ability, experience and reliability of your
assistants. Good people will be able to carry out large jobs with no intervention from you.
Inexperienced or unreliable people will need close supervision to get a job done to the
correct standard. However if you coach, encourage and give practice to them you may
improve their ability to carry out larger and larger tasks unsupervised.
c) Delegate complete jobs:
It is much more satisfying to work on a single task than on many fragments of the task. If
you delegate a complete task to a capable assistant, you are also more likely to receive a
more elegant, tightly integrated solution.
d) Explain why the job is done, and what results are expected:
When you delegate a job, explain how it fits into the overall picture of what you are trying
to achieve. Ensure that you communicate effectively:
o the results that are needed
o the importance of the job
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Once you have decided to delegate a task, let your assistant get on with it. Review the
project on the agreed reporting dates, but do not constantly look over their shoulders.
Recognize that your assistants may know a better way of doing something than you do.
Accept that there may be different ways of achieving a particular task, and also that one of
the best ways of really learning something is through making mistakes. Always accept
mistakes that are not caused by idleness, and that are learned from.
f)
You have delegated a task to take a work load off you. If you accept only partially
completed jobs back, then you will have to invest time in completing them, and your
assistant will not get the experience he or she needs in completing projects.
h) Give credit when a job has been successfully completed:
Public recognition both reinforces the enjoyment of success with the assistant who carried
out the task and sets a standard for other employees.
4.1
Lack of time:
Delegating jobs does take time. In the early stages of taking over a job you may need to
invest time in training people to take over tasks. Jobs may take longer to achieve with
delegation than they do for you to do by yourself, when coaching and checking are taken
into account. In time, with the right people, you will find that the time taken up reduces
significantly as your coaching investment pays back.
ii)
By doing jobs yourself you will probably get them done effectively. If, however, your
assistants are standing idle while you do this, then your department will be seriously
inefficient. Bear in mind the cost of your time and the cost of your department's time when
you are tempted to do a job yourself.
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Whenever you delegate, you surrender some element of authority (but not of
responsibility!) This is inevitable. By effective delegation, however, you get the benefits of
adequate time to do YOUR job really well.
v) Fear of becoming invisible:
Where your department is running smoothly with all routine work effectively delegated, it
may appear that you have nothing to do. Now you have the time to think and plan and
improve operations (and plan your next career step!)
vi) Belief that staff 'are not up to the job':
Good people will often under-perform if they are bored. Delegation will often bring the best
out of them. People who are not so good will not be effective unless you invest time in
them. Even incompetent people can be effective, providing they find their level. The only
people who cannot be reliably delegated to are those whose opinions of their own abilities
are so inflated that they will not co-operate.
It is common for people who are newly promoted to managerial positions to have difficulty
delegating. Often they will have been promoted because they were good at what they were
doing. This brings the temptation to continue trying to do their previous job, rather than
developing their new subordinates to do the job well.
4.2
While you should delegate as many tasks as possible that are not cost effective for you to carry
out, ensure that you do not delegate the control of your team. Remember that you bear ultimate
responsibility for the success or failure of what you are trying to achieve.
Effective delegation involves achieving the correct balance between effective control of work and
letting people get on with jobs in their own way
5.
One of the problem facing managers when it comes to delegation is knowing what and what not
to delegate. As a rule of thumb, you should able to delegate the following:
i)
Project that expand the capabilities of the individual, e.g. preparation of statistical data,
restructuring departmental workflows, recommendations for future activities.
ii) Complete task with responsibilities. Giving only part of job will provide no sense of
achievement.
iii) Closed decision with clear cut criteria.
On the other hand, task that should not be delegate include:
a) Management prerogatives and key tasks : e.g. salary review, departmental objectives,
confidential or sensitive task.
b) Part task with no overall responsibility
c) Only boring, mundane, routine task
The following are a list of tasks that could be delegated to staff
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BAD DELEGATION
Giving additional tasks to already overworked
staff
Delegating only part of a task
Nil or inadequate training
Constantly checking up on progress
6.
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v) Coaching employees
If your activity log shows you do not spend the bulk of your time in these five areas, this should
spur you to delegate. Squandering your day on minor matters will divert you from what really
counts and stymie your company's growth.
Do delegate:
All routine or even sporadic clerical duties (filing, counting, sorting, routine reports)
Making minor decisions
Answering routine questions
Minor staffing problems such as scheduling
Anything your employees are expected to do when you're not there
Jobs that can develop the employee in other areas for potential promotion
Don't delegate:
Armed with the answers, you can delegate duties to people who are receptive to accepting them.
Also consider the work habits of individuals on your team. Some people may need lots of
explanation, while others merely want to know your expectations and any guidelines before
they're left alone to "get it done."
Step 3: Communicate What You Want Done
Rather than rush to give "do this, do that" orders, effective delegation consists of explaining the
WHAT and the WHY:
WHAT do you want the employee to do?
WHY did you choose them to do it?
When you delegate, include a "WHAT-WHY statement." Examples:
I'd like you to make ten survey calls to find out what our customers think of our new product.
Given your excellent phone manner, I think you would represent us well and get people talking.
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We need to turn in some financial information to state regulators by next Friday, and I want you to
confirm all the numbers are up-to-date and accurate in our financial exhibits. You're a stickler for
details, so I'm depending on you to crosscheck everything.
Can you write a letter to our suppliers about our new purchasing policies? You're familiar with our
expense control measures and you're a good writer, so I think you would be perfect to write this
letter and provide the proper context.
Step 4: Follow Up
Establish checkpoints to monitor progress. This discussion should be a collaborative process
where you reach mutual agreement on how you intend to follow up.
You have three options to track an employee's work:
a) Scrutinize and approve every step of the assignment before the worker proceeds to
the next stage.
Pro: You ensure the project is completed satisfactorily, and you can satisfy your urge to
know what's going on throughout the process. Many control-oriented entrepreneurs prefer
to keep a close watch on an assignment after they delegate it, especially if it involves lots
of details or complicated steps.
Con: You might make the employee feel stupid by signing off on each step. You risk
showing you don't trust others to think for themselves without your constant oversight.
Plus, it takes more of your time.
b) Set a date for the individual to complete the work. Instruct the employee to come to
you with any questions along the way; otherwise, you stay out of it.
Pro: You give the worker a chance to operate independently without lots of interference.
Your hands-off role also frees you to do what's most important.
Con: You may be in for an unpleasant surprise if the work isn't done by the due date or it's
done incorrectly, and you may have no way of knowing how it's going unless the
employee chooses to keep you informed.
c) Designate a manager who's in charge of overseeing the employee's work. This is
really double delegation: you're assigning work to someone and assigning a supervisor to
monitor that work.
Pro: You increase the odds the work will get done properly without having to spend
time tracking it yourself. You can also give your team leaders a chance to expand their
supervisory role by making them the "contact person" for your employee and by having
them follow the worker's progress.
Con: In a fast-growing business, you may not have the luxury of putting a manager in
charge of monitoring an employee's work. And that manager may not have the time to
track the project carefully or provide meaningful help to the employee.
7.
MONITORING SYSTEM
After delegating tasks, we must ensure that the work is done accordingly. Therefore, we must
develop and maintain a certain monitoring system to monitor and control the work being
delegated to other staff.
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iv) The benefits of having the proper balance among the three levers of behavioral control,
culture, rewards and incentives/boundaries
v) Why there is no one best way to design strategic control systems and the important
contingent roles of business- and corporate-level strategies
vi) The key participants in corporate governance: shareholders, management (led by the
CEO), and the board of directors
vii) The role of corporate governance mechanisms in aligning the interests of managers with
those of shareholders
Formulate/
Formulate/
Plan
Plan
Strategies
Strategies
Implement
Implement
Strategies
Strategies
Strategic
Strategic
Control
Control
Constant
environmental scanning and monitoring, what is of strategic
importance
Formulate
Implement
Formulate
Implement
Strategies
Strategies
Strategies
Strategies
Operational
managers and professionals involved in scanning and
monitoring
This information is best discussed using rich media - face-to-face conversation involving multiple levels
Behavioral
Informational
Discussion is a catalyst for critique of assumptions, data, and action plans
Control
Control
Strategic
Strategic
Control
Control
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Mission-driven
Culture
Rewards
Stability
CULTURE
(TACIT)
under conditions of:
Unpredictability
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Consistency is critical
Adaptability is critical
7.2
i)
ii)
iii)
Rewards are linked to performance AND desired behaviors (ends AND means)
iv)
v)
vi)
vii)
i)
ii)
iii)
iv)
v)
Effective delegation is an important tool that some managers hesitate to use. This may result
from inexperience with delegation particularly for a novice manager, a reluctance to release work
one personally enjoys doing, or even an adherence to the old adage, "If you want something
done right, do it yourself." Here are eight basic guidelines to help you delegate more effectively:
Determine what you will delegate. You decide which task(s) you want to delegate.
Keep in mind that delegating is different from simply assigning someone a task
that is already a part of the normal job requirements. When you delegate, you give
someone else one of your job tasks; but you maintain control and responsibility.
Clarify the results you want. Determine the results you consider necessary for
successful completion of the task. In general, the employee to whom you delegate
uses his or her own methods to accomplish the task. If you expect use of a specific
method to accomplish results, relate that to the employee at the beginning.
Clearly define the employee's responsibility. You, not the employee, determine the
level of responsibility. Be sure the employee understands that level. After you have
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given the employee the information about the delegated task, ask him to tell you
his understanding of both the task and goals. If the employee's answers do not
match your expectations, review the matter in detail again.
Communicate the employee's authority over the delegated task. Define the scope
and degree of authority given to the employee for the delegated task. Explain
which decisions he or she may make independently and which require your
approval. Be specific. If you tell the employee, "Do whatever it takes," you may
end up with an unpleasant surprise if the employee violates company standards.
However, a too-limited authority may stop the employee from accomplishing the
task. Give the employee the authority necessary to accomplish the task but not so
much authority that he or she can create a major disaster before anyone discovers
the problem. Also, make clear the budget available and budgetary limitations.
Be sure the employee understands his or her authority. Again, have the employee
repeat back to you his or her understanding of authority regarding the task.
Resolve any misunderstandings at the beginning.
Establish a time limit. Time means different thing to different people. If you want
the delegated work completed within a certain period, make that clear to the
employee. (If you say, "When you get time, work on this," the project may remain
untouched for weeks.) Also, if you want portions of the work completed by certain
dates, make that clear.
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SOALAN / QUESTION(S)
1. What is the definition of delegation?
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2. Why do people fail to delegate?
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3. Why is delegation important?
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RUJUKAN / REFERENCE (S):
1. Patrick Forsyth P (2005) Grolier Business Library. Managing Through People. Grolier
International inc. Pages 47 60
2. McGraw-Hill Companies,inc (2004) Student CD-ROM for use with Strategic
Management Text and Cases