Why might some managers have difficulties in delegating authority?

Question

Why might some managers have difficulties in delegating authority? Why does this problem tend to plague smaller businesses?

Answer 1

Because they feel any subordinate that is capable of effectively wielding authority is a direct threat to them. Remember, they are only a rung or two above you on the corporate ladder, and will guard their own position fiercely. This is as common in large companies as it is in small ones.

Answer 2

Read "The E-Myth". This book covers the most common problems with small businesses and helps explain why so many fail.

Not being able to delegate stems from a manager or owner being too strong on technical skill, and not strong enough on managerial or entrepreneural skill.

Techinical skill - This makes a person create great products or service. This is the skill so many people think is the most important to success in any business. They are wrong. Technical skill, the ability to create a high quality product or service, is only a minimum requirement to success in a business, not the primary reason for it.

Managerial skill - This is what makes someone good at using others to accomplish more than you can by yourself. It's the ability to put a process on paper, organize the training of others, create accountability in others, measure compliance, evaluate and change procedures to yield consistant products and service on a mass scale. The ability to delegate effectively.

Entreprenural skill - This is what makes a person look to the future, ask "what else is possible", "how can I solve that problem", strategize and daydream. It is a creativity skill. A knack for coming up with new and exciting ideas.

The perfect manager or business owner has a balance of all these skills. The wise manager/owner realizes that it's almost impossible to be perfect. They realize their weaknesses and hire others that are strong in those areas.

You'll find that most managers or owners that are not good at delegating authority are imbalanced between these three main skills. They tend to be very technically skilled, and especially unskilled managerially, though they'll usually think their exceptional technical skill qualifies them as a good manager. People who are heavy in technical skill have a tendency to abdicate instead of delegate, meaning they give people things to do on a limited scale, without proper training, supervision, evaluation and feedback. They usually return to the person they abdicate responsibility to and find that person is not performing the task how they themselves want it done. They don't realize it's their lack of management skills that created a situation where the person cannot recreate their work. They end up not being satisfied with the work, and without the managerial skill to fix the situation, the take the work back on themselves.

The type of manager/owner that has this character trait are the same ones that end up burned out, not satisfied with their help and overworked because they can't trust other to do the work for them. They don't have the opportunity to concentrate on managerial and entrepreneural tasks in the business and fail to operate at maximum efficiency or grow. Eventually, they go out of business.

In a nutshell, this is why most businesses fail.

Part of the fault starts with the boss, or previous bosses of the manager/owner. Most often, they too have strong technical skill, and have not properly trained their managers to manage instead of just working. They promote those with strong technical skill instead of strong managerial skill and set themselves up for failure. The skills it takes to be an effective manager are completely different than the skills it takes to be a great employee, just as the skills required to be a good owner are different than that of a manager.

The place to start in order to rectify a problem like this is to identify the skills necessary to effectively manage, and quit automatically choosing the employees with the best technical skill to be promoted into management.

Brandon O'Dell
O'Dell Consulting
Restaurants / Retail / Bars
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http://www.bodellconsulting.com

Answer 3

Some managers may feel that someone else may not do the job as good as they would or not the way that they want. Or they could be a control freak. This issue plagues small businesses because they feel personally responsible for the success and failure of the company.

Answer 4

A lot of small business owners have this problem...like a mother who wants to hire a babysitter and can't make up her mind who to get to watch her darling while she is gone. It's her baby and she can't seem to trust anyone to watch her while she is away.

They have a feeling that nobody else can handle the job like they can so they can't delegate the job or authority to others.