"Spend exactly all your time making the most of what you have and exactly none of your time whining about what you don't have." - Alan Doyle in "Where I Belong"

Lately, work has been pretty demanding and it often seems there is more that must be done than there is time to do. This is not an unusual circumstance for me, and I believe it’s not unusual for many others. There are various ways we try to deal with times like these. Setting priorities. Working harder, or working extra hours. Seeking clarification that all the work must be done in hopes that we will discover something that we can take off the list.

Another common approach to dealing with our workload is to delegate work to others. This is an everyday and appropriate way of managing work and one obvious choice for dealing with situations where we have more work than we can handle ourselves. As simple as this is in principle, I’ve found delegating work to be one of the more difficult things to get right in my career.

There are various reasons why I find delegating difficult to do well. Today, I’ll describe these and what I’ve tried to do as I’ve worked to overcome them. The issues I deal with seem to fit into two categories. Either I hesitate to delegate because I am not sure of those I would give the work to, or because I don’t want to amplify their own challenges of dealing with of a demanding workload and needing to take steps to manage this.

I struggled more with a lack of confidence in those I could delegate to earlier in my career as I made the shift from being a technician to supervising and managing.  It was hard for me to delegate work that I knew I could do faster or better myself. I moved from being the most senior, experienced, and skilled member of a team of systems programmers and systems administrators, to the role of working supervisor of that team.

I needed to recognize that not every task needed my level of skill and speed. To replace my expectations of speed and quality with the actual requirements of the task at hand. If the team was to keep up with work we needed to accomplish, I couldn’t let myself become a bottleneck. I learned to set appropriate expectations for deadlines and results, and to recognize that delegating challenging work was one of the better ways to help others develop technical, and time management, skills.

Overcoming my reluctance to burden others with more work has been harder. During most of my career, I’ve worked in environments where capacity has been a significant issue. We tend to be in “react mode” too much of the time, and to have little time for the more strategic activities involved in establishing really effective priorities. Everyone is busy, including me, and I hesitate to add to the load of others who are already scrambling to keep up with the tasks at hand.

Here, I’ve had to learn how to work with those I delegate to so that we can build effective partnerships that allow me to delegate, them to accept new tasks, and us to negotiate acceptable deadlines and other expectations. I’ve also had to learn how to value my own time and the importance of my having time to play my part effectively if the team is to achieve the best results. Of course, I’ve had work delegated to me constantly by the vice presidents and CIO I’ve worked for, and that adds to my need to manage my time and resources effectively!

The process of delegating takes time, too, and I have to make time to do this effectively. Communicating clearly what needs to be done, and by when, and negotiating the deadlines and expectations, all take time. I’ve tended to wait too long to delegate, due to the reluctance I describe above, and this can add to the difficulty. I’ve needed to learn that by delegating sooner, I give those I delegate to a better chance to meet the real requirements of each task.

The need to follow up to ensure work is completed has also been an ongoing time challenge for me. As much as I wish I could establish clear expectations and rely on these being met, that is often not the case. Rather than assume work will be done on time and as expected, it’s been important to follow up. Those I delegate to face the need to respond to system outages, user requests, and other challenges. Communicating and coordinating with them is necessary for our shared success.

I’ve needed to learn how best to choose who to delegate work to based on their capability and capacity, my confidence in them and their own self-confidence, and the opportunity they would have to grow and develop by taking on the delegated task. It helps when the delegation of work represents an opportunity for both of us, but this isn’t always possible.

I look for opportunities to delegate and re-prioritize at the same time. When the team is already over committed, it can be critical to recognize what work can wait in order to allow for the completion of a new delegated task. I also consider the cost and benefit of taking more time to help an employee learn how to do a task I am delegating to them. While this takes longer than doing the work myself, it can create new options for future work and may even allow us to change the workflow to have these tasks go directly to a new person or team in the future.

By the time I retire, I will have been working full-time for approximately 39 years. I won’t have mastered delegating during my career, but I’ve certainly gotten better at it! The challenge of making the best of the time we have is a constant, and I’m sure that will remain true in retirement. I hope to continue learning how to spend my time where it makes the most difference, and I’m grateful that in retirement I will be able to spend even more time with my loved ones. They have ever been, and will remain, most important to me.