Page 85 - stephen covey The seven habits of highly effective people

THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE Brought to you by FlyHeart

Third, it defines your unique mission, including values and long-term goals. This gives direction
and purpose to the way you spend each day.
Fourth, it helps you balance your life by identifying roles, and by setting goals and scheduling
activities in each key role every week.
And fifth, it gives greater context through weekly organizing (with daily adaptation as needed),
rising above the limiting perspective of a single day and putting you in touch with your deepest values
through review of your key roles.
The practical thread running through all five of these advances is a primary focus on relationships
and results and a secondary focus on time.

Delegation: Increasing P and PC

We accomplish all that we do through delegation -- either to time or to other people. If we
delegate to time, we think efficiency. If we delegate to other people, we think effectiveness.
Many people refuse to delegate to other people because they feel it takes too much time and effort
and they could do the job better themselves. But effectively delegating to others is perhaps the single
most powerful high-leverage activity there is.
Transferring responsibility to other skilled and trained people enables you to give your energies to
other high-leverage activities. Delegation means growth, both for individuals and for organizations.
The late J. C. Penney was quoted as saying that the wisest decision he ever made was to "let go" after
realizing that he couldn't do it all by himself any longer. That decision, made long ago, enabled the
development and growth of hundreds of stores and thousands of people.
Because delegation involves other people, it is a Public Victory and could well be included in Habit
4. But because we are focusing here on principles of personal management, and the ability to delegate
to others is the main difference between the role of manager and independent producer, I am
approaching delegation from the standpoint of your personal managerial skills.
A producer does whatever is necessary to accomplish desired results, to get the golden eggs. A
parent who washes the dishes, an architect who draws up blueprints, or a secretary who types
correspondence is a producer.
But when a person sets up and works with and through people and systems to produce golden eggs,
that person becomes a manager in the interdependent sense. A parent who delegates washing the
dishes to a child is a manager. An architect who heads a team of other architects is a manager. A
secretary who supervises other secretaries and office personnel is an office manager.
A producer can invest one hour of effort and produce one unit of results, assuming no loss of
efficiency.
A manager, on the other hand, can invest one hour of effort and produce 10 or 50 or 100 units
through effective delegation.
Management is essentially moving the fulcrum over, and the key to effective management is
delegation.

Gofer Delegation

There are basically two kinds of delegation: "gofer delegation" and "stewardship delegation." Gofer
delegation means "Go for this, go for that, do this, do that, and tell me when it's done." Most people
who are producers have a gofer delegation paradigm. Remember the machete wielders in the jungle?
They are the producers. They roll up their sleeves and get the job done. If they are given a position
of supervision or management, they still think like producers. They don't know how to set up a full
delegation so that another person is committed to achieve results. Because they are focused on