The Effective Manager, 2nd Edition

13Push Work Down—Delegation

Delegation is one of the core reasons our Manager Tools cofounder, Mike Auzenne, did so well as an executive. He saw a lot of technical folks get promoted for various reasons over the course of his career. And he saw many of the best of them gradually slow in terms of their growth in responsibilities through promotions. They'd get promoted, and it would take longer than their previous job for them to master the new job. And it seemed like the “smartest” ones were the ones that slowed down the quickest.

What he was seeing was the gradual change in managerial life—from being smart about STUFF to being smart about PEOPLE. Basically, at some point your technical or industrial smarts run out, and you've got to get smart about people. And what Mike realized earlier than other technically bright folks is that he was getting further away from technical responsibilities and more and more of what he did was about or through people.

At first he felt frustrated. He was good at technical work, yet now there were people between him and the technical work.

Then he had the realization that separates all great executives from managers: that people were what executive effectiveness was all about, and it was no longer about the technical (or other) work. And then he realized he had to make others more effective at working on problems rather than throwing himself at problems, no matter how much better he was at solving the problems than everyone else was.

The leverage ...