The Long-Term Impact of Building An Upside-Down Pyramid – Part 3

In the first article in this series, we introduced the Upside-Down Pyramid Capacity Model™ and the Hour Glass Capacity Model™.  Next, we covered the first three steps required to change from those models to a right-side up pyramid.  Those steps were

1. Hire enough people to create excess capacity
2. Everyone needs to report to someone for development and performance assessment
3. Do your job – not someone else’s job, but your job

Now we want to close the loop and pick up on the last three steps in the process.  They are:

4. Before you start your work, determine all of the work that can be delegated to someone below you
5. Once you know what work can be delegated, verify whether the people to whom you are handing the work are able to do the work
6. If the person you are delegating work to does not have the requisite skills, then train them

So, let’s jump right into these last three steps and see if we can put some framework around the topic:

Effective delegation and development of people is one skill set that never becomes irrelevant and will always be needed, no matter what position you hold in the firm.  Indeed, this skill set is foundational to long-term leadership success as well as the long-term sustainability of the firm.

Delegation and Clarity of Expectations
When we refer to delegation, we need to be clear about what it is, and what it is not.  True delegation is not abdication nor is it dumping.  Effective delegation is a function of several key factors, the first of which is clarity of what actually is being delegated.

For example, if you hand off a tax return to someone to complete, then you have delegated the task of tax return preparation, which includes a number of specific activities called for by that type of return.  These specific activities might include checking or updating depreciation schedules, and any number of other discrete steps required.  Here’s the first question: Does the person you are delegating the work to know from experience all of the related tasks that need to be done in order to produce the results you are looking for?  If the answer is “no,” then you are dumping.  Spend the necessary time to make sure this person is clear about all of the work that has to be performed.

Once you’re clear on what you’re delegating, you need to be as clear about what your expectations are with respect to the matter being delegated.  Staying with our tax return example, what are your expectations regarding:

• Deliverable—what is expected to be generated from this work? Will the entire tax return be ready in draft state for detailed review upon this person’s completion of the task?
• Due date—when does is have to be completed for detail review?
• Budget—about how much time might it take to complete it?
• Resources and support—who will be available for assistance on this, and where do they go if they need more information?
• Monitoring—how frequently will you be checking in with them to ascertain that they’re moving along as expected with the project?

Unless you create mindshare about the task and your expectations for it with the person to whom you’re delegating the task, you often will be surprised, and usually it will not be a pleasant surprise.

Delegation as a Developmental Activity
Unless the person to whom you’re delegating the specific task is currently performing this type of task consistently at an acceptable performance level without requiring someone to step in and provide supervision, then you’ll need to go beyond achieving mindshare about what needs to be done on this task.  You will need to provide a platform for developmental learning that includes 1) verification of intellectual understanding, 2) experience in attempting to perform the work, 3) review of the work to determine points of failure, if any, and 4) repeating steps 1through3 until that person can perform the work correctly without your involvement.  We call this the LTFR (Learn, Try, Fail, Repeat)® approach to development.  Depending on their current ability—not what you think they should be able to do, but what they’re actually doing—you will need to adjust the amount of LTFR® and “how to” guidance—how granular you’re getting and how frequently you’re getting involved with them.  You’ll need to adjust your follow-up based on their success.  It is up to you to monitor their progress on the job and be available to them to help them learn as they go through this process.  Here is a key point:

If someone has never performed this specific function or task, then you have to assume that they don’t know how to do it, which requires you to walk them task-by-task through the LTFR System® until they are successfully accomplishing the work without your involvement.

This is what delegation is all about—following a developmental process that monitors, educates, and teaches, driving people through a continuum from inability to ability.

A word of warning here—do not mistake enthusiasm for the ability to do the work.  An enthusiastic attitude will help overcome plenty of obstacles, but it will not replace the actual practical experience needed to perform specific tasks and activities.  Usually what you can expect if you dump a project on an enthusiastic associate who has no experience doing that specific type of work, is to find them less enthusiastic after they get into it, especially when they find out that they’ve been dumped in the deep end of the swimming pool without a life jacket.  Although one may say that, “This is the way I learned it,” that does not make this practice right.  This “make it on your own” approach will work fine for a few, but as your firm grows larger, you will find this ideology cracking under the pressure of volume.  If you want to develop your people and create the capacity for delegating more and higher level work to them, you need to view each assignment as an opportunity to make someone better, faster and stronger.

Let’s take a look at the flip side of the preceding situation.  Assume you’ve handed off a project to someone who starts off insecure and lacking a bit of confidence about the task at hand.  Again, we hear some professionals tell us, “They need to man up,—and maybe they don’t have the right stuff in the first place if we have to coddle them to get their work done.”  Wrong again.  Research shows that there are predictable spots in the learning curve where confidence needs to be reinforced when someone is learning a new skill.  Imagine flying a plane without an instructor for the first time … the instructor knows the student is ready.  However, if the person flying solo for the first time isn’t at least a little bit insecure, they probably should seek psychiatric assistance.  This means that you can’t live by the motto, “Only the strong survive.”  You need to assess each person’s skills and motivation on a case-by-case basis, in light of each job you delegate to them.  You then need to adapt your leadership approach—coaching, supporting, monitoring, and delegation—to each person, depending on the specific task at hand and your development objective.  One size does not fit all.  And one approach does not fit one person either (always using the same approach, coaching, monitoring, developmental activities, etc. with the same person) since your decision as to how to delegate is based on the combination of the specific task and the specific employee’s observed capability regarding that task.

There Are Two Key Factors to Consider
To get to the point of being able to delegate effectively, you need to use a range of management and leadership behaviors, and you need to make your delegation a developmental activity.  This means that you SHOULD expect some failures along the way as learning progresses, but it is important that we continually try to strike the right balance between providing enough direction and allowing each person to stretch his or her wings a bit.

You need to recognize that the type and amount of supervision you provide your people needs to be constantly changing to reflect the supervisory needs of each person on each task, project, or activity you provide them.  Two key factors to consider are the person’s demonstrated capability of performing what you’ve delegated to them, and the person’s state of mind about doing it.

The more capable someone is of doing a particular task, the less direction they need from you.  To be clear here, when we speak of the capability of doing a particular task, we mean that they have been doing it correctly already—they’ve shown us that they know how to do it, they can do it and are doing it properly on a consistent basis without the requirement of supervision.  It doesn’t mean that, simply in your opinion, they should be able to do it, or could be able to do it.   Nor does capability mean that someone has accomplished the work when someone stood over them either.  These are critical distinctions to keep in mind here.  Anyone can do a task if someone is standing over them giving them direction each step of the way, so capability is attributed to someone when he or she does the work correctly, on time on their own.

When we refer to a person’s state of mind, we are talking about how willing or unwilling someone is to perform the task you delegated to them.  They may be willing, or willing but insecure about doing it, or they may just be unwilling to do it.  For example, if you have someone who is always late getting their time posted for billing purposes, you’re likely facing a situation where that person is simply unwilling to do that mundane, boring part of the job.  Let’s face it, entering time into the system is not rocket science or brain surgery, and most people have been adequately trained to perform this simple task effectively, so consistent noncompliance most likely is due to someone’s unwillingness to fit it into their schedule.  The person who consistently fails to handle this task in a timely manner needs more attention from you to see that they follow through than the other people who comply with your firm’s requirements.

The most effective delegators in a CPA firm know how to gauge the supervisory needs of each of their people with respect to each task or activity assigned to them.  These people understand that they need to determine objectively how capable someone is performing a particular task or activity before they delegate that task or activity to them.  These delegators also understand that they need to consider the state of mind of the person to whom they’re delegating a particular task regarding that task.  This allows the leader to provide the right level of detailed direction, if applicable, as well as the appropriate level of communication and support, to help the follower learn successfully from the delegation.

Dana Nottingham – A Case Study – The Setup
Let’s look at a case study, derived from a variety of similar situations we’ve encountered at CPA firms with whom we work:

Dana Nottingham is a tax manager with your firm.  She has been working well with clients, her peers, the partners, staff and referral sources of the firm.  Over the years she has developed a strong technical expertise and is a “go to” person in her area of subspecialty dealing with esoteric tax rules regarding foreign corporations and taxation.  Besides being at or near the top of her technical game, Dana also has good instincts for dealing with people—she seemingly has that intuitive ability to understand what they’re going through and can read them well—and she’s a pleasant person to be around.  The staff people really enjoy working with her, and she is an advocate for work-life balance, constantly watching out for her staff’s best interests.

Dana’s life, however, is anything but balanced.  She puts in as many hours as anyone in the firm, and usually more than most.  She just finds it hard to say “no” to client requests, and has equal difficulty adding work to her already burdened (in her opinion) people.  Consequently, she hangs on to too much work and is not delegating enough of the lower level activities to others.  While she’s been able to manage this way so far, you and your partners know that this is a train wrecking waiting to happen.

You recently sent her off to a two-day workshop on delegation to help open her eyes and build her skills in delegation and supervision.  Unfortunately, you haven’t seen any implementation of what the workshop covered since she’s been back.  When one of your partners mentioned it to her, she said it was good information but that she’s just too busy right now to implement it.  How will you structure a developmental discussion to get Dana on board with aggressively pursuing delegation, in her best interests, and in the interests of the firm?

Dana Nottingham – A Case Study – The Approach
So, how would you approach this situation with Dana?  First, we need to start with an understanding of Dana’s supervisory needs from you.  On the surface, she appears to generally be an expert and quite capable in her role, functioning well overall with a will to succeed and a good attitude.  That being the case, the initial reaction of many CPAs reviewing this case study would be to agree, that yes, this person is both capable and motivated.  Just look at the position she’s attained, as well as her overall success.

But let’s look a little closer here.  While it is true that she is successful and capable technically, and has a good attitude with respect to many of her work responsibilities, is that really true with respect to delegation?  Some CPAs would suggest that since she has been to training on how to delegate appropriately, she is or should be capable of delegating properly.  However, as leaders and managers, we are not looking at what she should be capable of doing, but what she actually is doing and demonstrating without supervision as to her performance.  So what is she demonstrating in her delegation behavior right now?  That she is NOT doing it.

Next, let’s consider the attitude issue.  Is she confident and motivated in her delegation?  It’s hard to imagine that this is the case.  Actually, she is either unwilling or not confident about doing it, so she’s putting off the difficult task of changing her behavior at work (putting what she learned in class to practice).  Usually, if you find an intelligent, otherwise motivated person like Dana who’s not doing what you’ve asked on a task such as this, it’s often because she’s not confident about doing it, although in this case, it is likely that she just doesn’t want to do it.

If you had originally diagnosed this situation as one where you just needed to exhort and cajole her more, (because after all, she is an experienced and “go to” manager), you would be part of the 95% of people who make this same mistake.  Exhort all you want, smile, yell, threaten—it won’t be effective.  Dana needs more direction -- more task-specific direction and support -- from you to begin to implement delegation properly.  Without it, you will continue to be disappointed and she will likely burn out at some point.   She is not presently doing the task you want her to accomplish, and is either insecure or unwilling to get started, so the situation prescribes a leadership style that is directive with specific instruction, timeframes for accomplishment, and review points to ensure progress is made according to the action plan identified.

Quite often, Dana’s boss might (incorrectly) assume that, because Dana is technically competent and requires virtually no supervision or specific guidance regarding most aspects of her work, then she also shouldn’t need to be given specific guidance on any tasks she is expected to accomplish.  This is often referred to as the “halo effect,” which means we assume that if you are good at one thing, you are good at everything, and therefore direction and oversight are not required for this person.  But that is the key.  Your people, regardless of their stature in your organization, are good at some things (and therefore, don’t need much direction or oversight to complete those specific tasks), but they are not good at everything; in fact they may be performing miserably on some tasks.  So everyone, including your best employees and partners, depending on the work being assigned, will need direction and oversight anytime they have NOT successfully completed the work   on their own, on a timely basis.

Be Smart about How You Delegate and Develop
Unless you can effectively delegate to, and develop your people, you are destined to continually look for more experienced people outside your firm as the solution to this problem.  If you are experiencing skill gaps between your level and the next level of people in your firm, and feel that you can’t push work down to the level where it should be performed, the common solution we hear continues to be “to find better people.”  But first you need to know that “finding better people” is potentially the worst management philosophy in the universe because it rarely happens that you find a person that appears to have both the right skills and the personality that fits into your culture.  And when it happens, it is simply luck (as the odds of this happening are not in your favor) and even then, that new hire is often not a sustainable or a maintainable solution (because of what you had to pay to get them to join you, or the title you gave them to entice them, or their actual capabilities being what they sold you, etc.).

Therefore, we come down to the sustainable answer – it is not that you need to find better people, but that you learn to make (or build) better people.  Therefore, all of your people that manage others need to develop their management and development skills.  So, how do you do that?  What we’ve just covered in this brief summary are some of the key concepts behind Situational Leadership® (an example of a program that formally trains this area of expertise).  Situational Leadership® states that management needs to:

• Be clear about what is being delegated,
• Evaluate and understand that person’s true experience and ability as well as the motivation and attitude of the person to whom the work is being delegated,
• Insert development activities and oversight when appropriate,
• Adjust your style as needed as the employee evolves or as tasks change,
• Avoid micromanaging someone who can do the particular task  given to him or her, and
• Never throw both ends of the rope to someone trying to swim in the deep end of the pool who actually needs a good deal more guidance and direction.

By learning how to apply these concepts effectively in your firm, you can reverse your upside-down pyramid (and hour glass model), and shift it into a right-side up pyramid with an abundance of leverage, greater profitability and higher morale due to better work/life balance.  But most important, learning to build better people will allow you to close competency gaps and create a developmental culture that consistently generates better, faster and stronger people at every level throughout your organization.