Do you fix your own car? Probably not, as cars have become so complicated now that it is almost impossible for us to fix our own car on a Sunday afternoon, the way it used to be. The last time you bought a car did you buy it privately or from a dealership? Do you take it there to be serviced, drink a coffee or read a magazine while you wait, or go to work and collect it at the end of the day?
Do you drink water from the tap? When you are thirsty do you just get a glass out the cupboard and run the tap, drink until your thirst is satisfied? Or worse still, do you buy a bottle of water from the shop and drink it to quench your thirst?
This year for many reasons I have talked to many people about delegation. Delegation is just asking someone else for help.
Within your own business or within your own working environment, to ask someone to do something for you and to make sure they are happy and capable of doing it is a joyous thing. It frees up time and headspace of your own, you can do other things that are perhaps of higher value or more important to you. It often gives the person who you have delegated the work to the chance to do something that is higher value to them. Everybody moves up and everybody moves on. Many people though find a real difficulty with this concept and believe that ‘I may as well do it myself’.
These people miss the point that in their day-to-day lives they delegate almost everything away.
Very few people carry a bucket to the well where they know clean water is to bring drinking water back for their family. Not in Europe anyway. Very few people fix their own cars; most people buy their car from a dealership where they delegate the authority of sourcing a car and producing it, to someone else. They just hand over the money and take their car away. Very few people are ‘unbanked’ most people operate their finances through a banking institution. Once you realise that you are delegating almost everything else in your domestic life, it is easy to understand the values of delegating at work.
(TIP understand the difference between delegation and abdication at work) To abdicate is to force tasks upon other people (usually junior) without training, support or communication.
Blog Post Number - 1343
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