I was planning to focus this week’s blog post on the dangers of learning from success, but I got some feedback from my earlier post dismissing the overused management act of delegation that I want to discuss.

While delegation certainly has its place at work, my point here is it’s totally abused in business.  Believe it or not, it’s possible to be a great leader without delegating everything.  The best leaders I’ve interacted with let delegation happen naturally by driving accountability, rewarding success, and consistently trimming fat.  When it’s clear to a good employee they’re on the hook to make something happen, they’ll get it done and they’ll ask you to send anything their way that’s relevant, without you having to delegate to them.  A leader might get stuck feeling like they’re overwhelmed with work, needing to pass tasks off to their minions, but that’s a signal of a different problem.  Either your entire organization is overworked, you’re not effectively driving accountability, or you’re allowing your team to delegate up (which is just as bad).

If you feel like you’re stuck in this trap, here are a few strategies I’ve seen work well -

• Regroup: If your business is growing fast, it’s likely your setup from last year, month, week is no longer adequate.  The bad news is if you don’t figure it out, not only will you be one of these unfortunate leaders we all complain about, but you’ll also be a bottleneck for your team.  This is why so many small organizations have a hard time scaling up.  They assume they need to start training leaders how to delegate, but that’s exactly the wrong thing to do.  It takes time and may feel like a waste, but it’s worth putting in the time to rethink your team setup.  You might think about resizing the team or clarifying individual responsibilities.
• Reflect: There’s a possibility you’re no longer the right guy/gal for the job.  Your group may have scaled up beyond your means as a leader, or shrunk to the point that you’re expected to be more of a subject matter expert (for which, you may no longer be qualified).  In both cases it’s easy to see how you might settle into a role delegating versus doing.  Do yourself and your team a favor and get out of the way, find a new role or retrain yourself to be a more effective individual contributor.
• Address deficiencies: This one makes my skin crawl, but it happens a lot.  Part of your organization is terribly ineffective and lazy. Another part of your organization takes on every task you put in front of them and consistently deliver without asking questions.  To compensate for your weak group, you delegate their responsibilities to a high performing group.  There are so many obvious reasons this is the wrong thing to do.  This is classic organizational fat in need of trimming.

I’m sure there are many other approaches you can take to help, but my suggestion is to try something.  Delegation has a role in business, but it should happen organically if your team is properly designed.  Don’t just assume it’s a natural part of becoming a more effective leader of a growing organization.  Its much more a symptom of a problem than anything else..