Tips for Time Management
Delegating successfully

Do you need to delegate some of your tasks? Well tips for time management is the right place to come.  Here I focus on how to delegate tasks successfully and gain extra time as a result.

There is always someone who can help you.  You don't need to have staff to delegate.  We all do it everyday.  My wife shops on line for groceries.  The staff at the shop are delegated to go and get the stuff we need and deliver it to our home.

At work I've lawyers, accountants and software developers who have delegated responsibilities to do things on my behalf.  I even delegate stuff to my kids, friends, family, well to lots of people.

Sometimes when I'm describing tips for time management and I suggest delegation to people, they seem unsure if this is a real time management tip.  I think it is and it's actually one of the ones that's often overlooked.  You can save lots of time by delegating efficiently.

Who Can You Delegate To?

Often the hardest thing with delegation is to understand what you can delegate and to whom.  To understand the answer you have to look at the tasks that you have and the possible ways you can delegate them.

I'm going to assume that you know how to find the tasks that you have and that you've already sorted out the priority of these tasks.  If you haven't and you'd like some ideas about what to do then have a read of tips for time management.  This explains about how to set up and manage task list effectively.

Instead we're going to focus together on the task types that you might have.  We're going to look at how these tasks might be delegated and who they might be delegated to.

I'm going to follow a simple process that enables you to identify the areas that have the biggest call on your time.  For most people the simplest place to start is with work and non work tasks.  These areas then breakdown into lots of subgroups that give an idea bout the types of thing that you do all of the time.

Breaking down each of these areas into big chunks helps to explain how your time is spent.  A simple way to tackle this is to take each of the areas and then break them down across a week.

I've completed a sample table for an imaginary software developer.  Have a look at the table and you can probably pick out that the developer isn't actually spending a lot of time developing software.  Instead they are going to meetings and writing documents.

This analysis is key if you are to make a success of these tips for time management.  You cannot simply produce a table and expect results.  You need to add the thinking behind the tip.

You can see the table immediately brings out into the open what the developer is doing day to day.  They aren't putting their time into software development but into other activities.  So by picking some reasonable sized chunks for time you can immediately start to gain an idea of where problems with time might be.

To decide on the content of the chunks I try to break down the day into blocks of at least 1 hour, preferably 2 hours.  Over time I've found that this size seems to work pretty effectively.  It is small enough so you can determine what's happening but not so small you can't understand the big picture.

Once you have this table and have identified any issues (like lack of focus on software development) the next stage is to figure out if anything can be delegated.  In the sample given two obvious candidates stand out; meetings and writing.

It's highly likely that the developer won't enjoy writing or going to meetings.  Probably they need to do some of this type of work.  The question to ask is can any of it be delegated.  Again it's your thinking behind the tips for time management that'll bring success not the tip itself.

To understand the options you need to break the tasks down further.  Lets take meetings.  It transpires that the developer is going to a team meeting every day.  Every day the developer reports on progress and then sits through the reports of everyone else.  He's bored for 1.5 of the 2 hours.

In this case the developer needs to have a discussion with their boss or project manger.  They need to delegate attendance at the meeting to them.  The developer should provide a short status report and get someone else to deliver it.

Looking at the writing the developer discovers that much of it is pretty simple documentation.  This enables them to pass the work onto a more junior college.

This example as you may have guessed is not entirely made up.  I had a problem in one of my companies with developers spending too much time in meetings and not enough coding.  In fact they were spending time in meetings explaining why the coding was going so slowly!

You should be able to easily follow a similar process.  Figure out the big blocks of time.  Figure out who might be able to help.  Approach them and delegate the some of the work to them.  If you're wondering how to delegate smartly read on...

Delegate Effectively

I often get asked if you should delegate differently to different people.  I believe people think that this is the key to successful delegation.  Well I've found that actually the key to successful delegation is really quite simple.  First be clear about what you want to delegate and secondly be clear about why you want to delegate.

If you answer the "what" and "why" questions clearly, delegation is normally pretty easy to do.  This is what will make this one of one of the tips for time management a success.  But remember delegation is not about just dumping your workload on someone else.  They won't be motivated and the job will be poor.

Get SMART

To be clear about the "what" you need to think through in detail what you want to delegate.  You need to get SMART.  This is one of the tips for time management that you should use right across your time management toolkit.   SMART stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Agree
• Realistic
• Time bound

I'm guessing most of you might have heard this before.  It's one of the better known tips for time management techniques.  But let me put some simple context around it to reinforce its powerful message.  Let's return to one of my wife's delegations the grocery shopping.

Grocery shopping on line is a great example of a SMART system.  She picks from a website the items she wants.  There is no room for doubt over what she wants it's SPECIFIC.  My wife puts in a delivery slot which is timed meeting the TIMEBOUND requirement and it's REALISTIC since the shop knows what inventory it holds.  When she clicks on the buy button an AGREEMENT is made and then it's easy to MEASURE success.

Grocery shopping on line is SMART!

Now think about the last time you asked someone to do something on your behalf were you as SMART as on line grocery shopping?  If not then it's worth focussing on getting it worked out before talking to anyone about delegation of a task.

Explaining WHY

To successfully implement these tips for time management you need to sell them the benefits. If you want someone to actively take on a delegated task, especially when you're not their boss then you need to sell them on the benefits.    Selling the benefits doesn't mean the benefits for you it means the benefits for them.

Start by thinking about why you think the person concerned will benefit.  For the grocery shopping they are being paid so the benefit is financial.  For the developer scenario above more code will get completed, so more product and more company income.

Not all benefits are financial.  You might get more rest and so be less grumpy.  Whatever the reason you need to explain it clearly.  Take time out with the person and figure through the likely issues.  It probably isn't needed for a small task but for a more complex task, take your time, you'll reap the rewards later.

Like most tips for time management the ideas and techniques here will only work if you put in some of the effort.  Being SMART and selling the benefits on it's own isn't enough to achieve successful delegation.  You need to practise so that you become good at it.  Fortunately practise is free and with delegation and these tips for time management you should soon be making progress.