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Time Management
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The Economics of Delegation
A critical rule about delegation is this: whenever possible, del-
egate tasks to the person who is paid the least yet has the nec-
essary skills and training to perform the task.
Most often, when someone is paid to do a job that someone who
earns less could do as well, money is wasted.The most economical—
in every sense—use of an employee’s time is in performing tasks that
are at the high end of his or her ability and training.
This includes you. So when you fail to delegate a task others could
do as efficiently, your own value to the company is diminished, as well
as the value to the company of the person to whom you might have
delegated it.
cept in mind: it succeeds only if you assign responsibilities to
the right person. For convenience or because of a lack of
choice, we’re sometimes forced to delegate to someone inap-
propriate for the task. This may be the single greatest cause of
failure. Inappropriate delegation can lead to unsatisfactory
results or to employees who hide behind their job descriptions.
Targeting the right person for the job should be your main
priority. And if there’s no appropriate person, you may have to
hire one.
Delegation isn’t always downward. It can be sideways (later-
al), too. That’s the situation when you and the person to whom
you’re delegating are more or less equal in rank or level of
authority.
Here are two examples of delegating laterally:
You write easily and well, but hate to talk on the phone.
Meanwhile, a colleague hates writing but is a master of
phone skills.
Consider swapping responsibilities, if there’s enough flexi-
bility in your organization to do so. You don’t want to
avoid developing necessary skills, of course, but it doesn’t
makes sense not to match tasks with aptitudes and inter-
ests if possible.
You have a client who will be coming to town to discuss a