Entrepreneurs should delegate for business growth

I was reading a book recently and came across this quote by steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie: “No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.”

Perhaps it answered the question that I want to ask because I have become a do-it-all manager in my SME and feel frightened when I delegate some critical jobs to some of my employees. Sometimes I think I am not the type to feel free to delegate or maybe I don’t trust people. I don’t know which is which.

Is it only me or are there other people who struggle with this problem? How can I overcome this fear and learn to delegate?

From my perspective as a doctor, your question is a very simple one to answer, because all you need to do is look at your body. Your body works so well because many different specialists work in harmony to give the end product of you, a fully functional human being.

Imagine, for example, a time when each body organ insisted on doing all the functions by itself. The liver would move to the brain sometimes, and do all the thinking. At other times you would use your liver to walk (instead of your legs) and at other times, the liver would be called to see, and at other times to hear!

This, you must agree, is a ridiculous proposition, and for that reason, nature has evolved different organs for different purposes. None is more important than the other, just different.

Allow yourself to think of any organisation as an organic body, much like your own. The military would, for example, have the army, navy and air force. Within the army you would have an engineering battalion as well as an artillery battalion, as well as a medical division. Artillery without engineering would be a poor force, much as an air force without pilots or weather experts would not function.

A bank consisting of accounts without analysts or sales people would struggle, much as your SME that produces dairy products would suffer if all your employees were only cleaners.
A football team made up of goal keepers alone would be more ridiculous! Defenders and strikers are also important you will agree.

On the face of it, these examples are simple in the extreme, and in a sense, seem to ridicule your question, but my view is that is exactly what Andrew Carnegie is saying! You are only the heart in the SME and you cannot be the kidney.

Let the kidneys in the company take credit for removing all the toxins that are produced by the body. You accept the credit of pumping the blood to the kidneys and all the other parts of the body!

This then brings us back to your question, which essentially revolves around the issue of your inability to let go, and let specialist troops fight the battles they are qualified for.

There are several possibilities that impair your capacity to delegate. Some are to do with your personality, others with your training, while still others are to do with the team that you work with.

A debate in the Senate last week caught my eye in this regard. Senator Otieno Kajwang’, contributing to the debate on the impeachment of the Deputy Governor of Machakos, made remarks to the effect that any governor would want to have a weak deputy because a strong one is a threat.

He went on to state that if he was a governor, he would ensure his deputy was a weak one who did not shine. Herein lies an interesting contradiction.

Are you a governor to stay in power or to increase service delivery? As the deputy governor, are you there to undermine the governor or to serve the people of your county? The ideal answer is self evident while the answer in practice is less clear. One could, for example, argue that a deputy governor without ambition should not be there in the first place while others would argue that a deputy who does a good job for the courts will one day be elected full governor.

In the business world, matters are relatively simple, in that you and your team must sing from the same hymn sheet, or the shareholders (or sometimes the banks) will come for your blood sooner or later.

In the business world, delegation is about using the power of others to achieve set goals. That being the case, why do some people like you fear to delegate? Many fear delegation because of their own fear (or knowledge) of inadequacy. Many managers are afraid to give tasks to junior people who might “outperform them”.

For this reason, very senior people do routine (often boring tasks) that can be done more efficiently by junior staff. This leads to much frustration for all concerned.

As a manager, ask yourself at all times, is this a task that can be done (more cost effectively) by someone else? Remember your time is expensive and doing routine tasks is a waste of expensive resources (you!)

Some people simply lack the skills of delegation. Others do not know when to delegate and to whom, while others do not know how to delegate.

Your question does not allow me to know where your weakness originates from but take it from me, you need help! Whether you seek help from an HR consultant or your board, it remains a decision you must make.

They simply do not have it in their head that it is possible (and desirable) to delegate. A highly trained doctor continues to administer injections in his busy clinics!