Telepathic Delegation
Aaron J. Crowley
Stone Industry Consultant
Recently, a NASA representative called me to discuss the subject of one of my articles (proving that the Slippery Rock Gazette is more widely read than I realized).
After lengthy discussions, proposals, and negotiations, they contracted my services to co-develop a groundbreaking new management theory and practice.
The theory was simple and worked like this: a business owner would merely think about what his employees should do, and they’d do it… correctly and on time, every time.
As to the practice… well, turning an owner’s thoughts into an employee’s action was a bit more of a challenge than our team of brilliant scientists originally thought. Who knew NASA’s grasp of mental telepathy was so rudimentary?
Obviously this is just a joke, NASA is never going to call me and I will never work for a government agency… but I have in fact been in my lab studying the use and effects of what I like to call a “Delegation by Telepathy” management style in businesses for years.
It’s used by owners who confuse the formal delegation of tasks with the belief that because they think certain tasks are important and obvious, their employees will perform those tasks correctly and on time. The effect is almost always the same… costly frustration, unnecessary delays, and even catastrophic mistakes.
It may be normal to “think” that a measure-up tech should explain a lack of faucet information on a template prior to submitting the job to production. It may be natural to “think” that a fabricator will stop the process of coring the hole in a finished counter if there is missing or questionable information. And it may be reasonable to “think” that installers should take a core bit in case the fabricator forgets to do it in the shop.
But if there is any gap between what the owner thinks and what the employee does or doesn’t do... a frustrating delay for information… the tragic mistake of a misplaced faucet hole, or an incomplete job that delays the plumber and final payment for the work, is what the owner will be managing.
And an owner only has two choices: managing problems after they’ve occurred or managing the work through formal delegation of tasks to prevent those costly problems from occurring.
The formal delegation of any task is simple and requires 4 basic elements:
- Determine the position: the first step in formal delegation is to remove any doubt about “who” is responsible for a given task by exclusively assigning it to a dedicated position.
- Designate the desired result: the second step in formal delegation is to define the “when, where, and what.” In other words, where should the faucet information be and when should it be there.
- Design the steps: the third step in formal delegation is recognizing that to produce a desired result over and over again, the same steps must be followed consistently. Those steps must be designed and provided in written form.
- Developing the protocol: the fourth step in formally delegating a task is to provide the employee with clear instructions to notify the owner or supervisor in cases when the task cannot be completed as expected.
Manufacturing granite counters isn’t rocket science, but sometimes it can sure feel like it. So, until NASA develops a mental telepathy management device, let’s use the time-tested management tools for formally delegating important work that are already at our disposal–like talking to your crew.
Aaron Crowley is a stone shop owner, author, speaker, and consultant to mid size stone companies. Contact him at aaron@fabricatorsfriend.com