9. Abdication Vs. Delegation – published 06.06.2012
Published on the 6th June 2012 Abdication Vs. Delegation is a fundamental principle that we work together on as a team.
Perhaps its time I re discuss this with the team overall for the things that are to come because it’s essential for the workings of a good team and an essential part of leadership.
I learned about this the hard way by working with someone who abdicated abdication only to see that damage that it causes, still as valuable now as it was 5 years ago.
I have recently had a serious situation at work in my NHS specialist practice, which meant that I had to go “back down the line”. This is a process where you move from a position of seniority back to being the guy on the ground doing the basic work. It is a conversation I have had many times with my friend, Shaun Reason, who is a Chief Executive in Hertfordshire.
Shaun’s business was based on NHS contracts and in the current financial climate, they lost a large majority of their business and he has had to go “back down the line” line managing members of staff and departments where before he would sit, as Chief Executive of the company and deal only with the strategy.
It is a salutary experience going “down the line”. In the first instance it makes you cross and gives you a feeling that you are doing stuff, which is not worthwhile. After feeling like this for a while, I decided to embrace the whole aspect and it gave me the opportunity to look in detail at what was going on at my practice, from a clinician and nurse’s point of view. I would sit in surgery with my MacBook open and my Evernote list ready to add points for improvement and after the first few visits I had a whole ream of things that I would like to change to make the service even better. The staff at the practice really appreciated having me there more; to be able to answer queries or speak to patients directly and all in all it has been a really positive experience.
The crisis will be over soon and I will be removing myself from the basic day-to-day stuff at the practice again but I have decided that I plan to keep a regular foot hold here and do more clinical work than is actually necessary to allow me to keep a handle on the standards and progress within the practice.
There is a famous old story where Sir John Harvey Jones took over at ICI in the 1980’s (which was a failing company) and spent 2 weeks going out in the cabs with the delivery drivers to find out what was wrong. Although, obviously, not quite the same scale it is often really important for us to get our hands dirty again in situations where we felt we have moved away from the basic stuff.
Delegation, in my view, is the art of asking valued team members to perform tasks to free you up to perform higher tasks. In the first instance you must understand the tasks you are delegating and they must never be beneath you.
That would be abdication, abdication is not good.
Blog post number: 1507