Delegation as a tool for leadership, effectiveness, motivation and professional development
Last time we discussed risk management in IT development. This time, let's talk about the “soft” skills of a business analyst, namely, delegation in the context of the work of a business analyst in IT development, Agile projects, non-linear subordination and interaction with our frankly inflated expectations of how our We work with you for professional and career growth. We will look at the different facets of this tool through models of planning, leadership, motivation and training.
I would like to point out right away that content in such a context is not Googled. You can only find individual models in other contexts. Therefore, I hope that today it will be interesting both for those who delegate, and for those who carry out delegated tasks, and for those who sabotage this process in every possible way.
The article was written based on my report of the same name, which I read at the Analyst Days 14 conference. I also attached the video at the end of the article.
Delegation, like any other management tool, has its pros and cons and they affect all participants in this process.
I think most of you understand what the main advantages. This:
increasing the productivity of each project participant and the team as a whole,
improving the quality of the project if the performer is sufficiently competent,
increasing motivation by switching to new tasks,
growth in the professional field,
strengthening the authority of each team member,
growth of competence of all parties,
training of successors; great career prospects open up for them.
Every medal has a reverse side, and this one too. Let's now look at the possible disadvantages:
Productivity drops when it takes longer to explain a task than expected;
quality decreases if the performer does not have enough knowledge, experience, or competence in general;
the authority and motivation of all project participants is weakened if the delegated task is perceived as an unlawful shift of work.
Therefore, taking into account this far from complete list of risks, we will talk about how to delegate in order to catch only the positives.
First, let's agree on what we mean by delegation. The first definition that is googled tells us that
Delegation is the transfer of tasks and actions from the manager’s sphere of activity, the necessary competence and functional responsibility to a subordinate
I agree only partially. Perhaps in the traditional world of linear reporting this is so, but in our Agile development world and Scrum teams, firstly, we can delegate not necessarily from the manager to the subordinate, we can do it within the team. Secondly, competencies may not be transferred, but rather acquired by the team as part of a delegated task.
Responsibility can also be transferred in different ways. Let's talk about this using the example of a RACI matrix.
We will divide the prioritization of requirements into the prioritization of business requirements and the prioritization of implementation requirements.
If the leading analyst is formally responsible for prioritizing business requirements, and the junior analyst is responsible for the implementation requirements, then there will be no delegation at all, it’s just a distribution of responsibilities (the first line with R/A icons in the picture below). But if the leading analyst is formally responsible for prioritizing all requirements, then performing part of the work by the junior will already be delegation.
In order to draw this line between delegation and assignment of responsibilities, you need to know your job description and understand whether you should be performing the task or not. It is also important to consider that in delegation it is possible to transfer part of the responsibility for execution: i.e. the younger one will do it, but the older one will check and will be responsible for the result (second line with R/A icons in the picture below). Or you can transfer responsibility for the result: i.e. the younger one will do it himself, check it, and answer (last line).
Let's continue the previous example and consider when the same delegated task can cause a diametrically opposite effect.
There are 3 analysts on the project: leading, senior and junior. The lead analyst is responsible for identifying business requirements. At the same time, the lead and senior analysts do not have domain knowledge about the project, and the junior analyst is a domain expert. For some reason, the lead analyst decides to delegate the identification of business requirements to senior and junior analysts.
It is logical that he delegates to the junior the identification of specific business requirements. Because Thanks to his knowledge of the domain, he will quickly find a common language with stakeholders. He will figure out the details better, and ultimately the performance will improve. But the quality of business analytical activities may be lower, because the junior has no experience in this. But there is motivation to master new competencies for him: he has never identified the requirements before. If you visualize this as a diagram, then in the column for identifying specific business requirements, you can see multiple obvious advantages for the implementer and some disadvantages for the delegator.
The lead analyst decides to delegate the identification of non-specific business requirements to a senior analyst. On the one hand, you can be calm: the senior is a professional. He will do everything accurately, on time, with good quality and there is nothing to worry about. But there is a nuance! He will not learn anything new during this time, and there is no motivation for him to do the work of a leading analyst if this is not part of his responsibilities. Naturally, if the main motivator for an analyst is learning, then he will have more negativity in this case.
However, we have not answered the question of exactly which tasks can be delegated to others. Let's try to understand this precisely by understanding what can be delegated.
In my experience, when answering this question, analysts often turn to the Eisenhower Matrix, which divides all tasks into how urgent they are and how urgent they are. important for the person delegating them. And they recommend doing urgent and important tasks yourself. Schedule tasks that are not urgent and important. Cross out non-urgent and unimportant ones and forget about them altogether. Well, urgent but unimportant ones should be delegated.
In my opinion, this is a good model for getting started with the distribution of tasks for a high-load leader. But in practice, I can give examples where delegating tasks from each quadrant is acceptable. In the illustration I give examples for each case.
For example, that you were asked to think over an SLA system. Let's analyze the situation using the Eisenhower matrix:
Urgent and important: think over an SLA system for concluding an ASAP agreement. This can be delegated to an analyst working in support.
Urgent and unimportant: consider a simplified presentation of the SLA system to discuss current performance tomorrow with the client. This can be delegated to an analyst who has the time.
Important, but not urgent: think over an SLA system for support (starts in 3 months). This can be delegated to an analyst who has not yet done this.
Unimportant and non-urgent: think through an alternative SLA system that could give us better performance with the same performance. It is logical to delegate this to an analyst who wants and can learn this.
The next approach or side from which we can try to understand what tasks can be delegated is to check whether the task is strategic, tactical or operational.
Obviously, it is unwise to delegate strategic tasks to a newcomer. And a person with a tactical mindset will be bored with constantly performing operational tasks. Accordingly, firstly, we select tasks at this level.
Secondly, we understand that if we develop employees and set them more complex tasks, there is an opportunity delegate not the entire process, but only some of its stages. Pay attention to the diagram: for each task, the tasks themselves are indicated in blue at the top, and then in the lines – what steps are needed for each type of task, and who can perform them: only the performer, only the delegate, or any of them. And in the process of work, always delegate either responsibility for execution, or for the final result, or for both aspects at the same time.
Now let's try to formulate the qualitative characteristics of the tasks. What tasks can be delegated in a way that motivates people to complete them. And I propose to look at this question through 3 types of leadership:
personal leadership,
team leadership,
task leadership.
In the case of personal leadership, the main task of leadership itself is to achieve some goals of the performer (i.e., these are some professional, career goals). Accordingly, it will be effective to delegate precisely those tasks that help him grow professionally. The table shows a positive impact on both sides (both the performer and the delegate).
In the case of team leadership, the goal of leadership is to improve the effectiveness of the team. Accordingly, it will be effective and interesting to delegate those tasks that increase collaboration in the implementation of the role model. There are quite a lot of advantages for all parties: delegating, performing and the team as a whole.
In the case of project or task leadership, the main value is completing the task on time and with the required quality. The personal interests of the performer and the delegate are not taken into account here, only the teams. Accordingly, task leadership in fact degenerates into management.
In the modern world, where Scrum teams or Agile teams are organized to complete a task, the model that is effective is the combination of team leadership and task management. From here you can see so many team building activities that are carried out in Agile teams.
Let's take a closer look at the difference between a leader and a manager.
Typical portrait of a manager: he manages the work in order to deliver the desired result of the required quality on time. He plans tasks, distributes them, makes decisions independently, supports the status quo in every possible way, and minimizes risks. Its value lies precisely in achieving stability of the entire process.
Leader leads people. He helps them decide and understand where to move, but does not make decisions for them, although he can facilitate them. He is aware of current risks and is able to question existing approaches. His core value lies in being at the helm of big change.
I think from this we can conclude that these people will have completely different criteria for quality and expectations for the delegated task. Those. If a manager delegates a task, he will most likely, first of all, do it as clearly and understandably and instructively as possible in order to get the expected result on time.
A leader can play outside your comfort zone, especially if we are talking about the case of personal leadership. For example, if a leader is trying to develop in his follower the ability to make decisions in a critical situation, then when transferring the task he may give a contradictory situation and may not support or advise in a timely manner. And yet, to say “come on, we urgently need to make a decision.” Yes, you will be categorically uncomfortable, you may be offended by the leader, etc. But he will achieve his goal and develop the necessary competencies in you. A manager will never do that.
Accordingly, you need to clearly understand who delegates the task to you: a manager or a leader, and from this understand the criteria for the success and completion of the task.
What's important! The manager formally has the right to distribute tasks to you, but the leader may not have this right; he delegates for other reasons. A particularly dangerous trap is when your leader suddenly becomes a project manager and the criteria suddenly change.
However, successful managers tend to be leaders in some way, and they can also delegate tasks to you that are not included in your job description. This is basically easy to do:
it is necessary to show the person to whom the task is delegated how important it is that this particular person does this particular task, i.e. we raise the bar of importance and motivation,
define the expected criteria for completion and success of the task, give some instructions,
agree on how we will communicate while completing the task,
foresee any possible difficulties, problems, pitfalls,
offer support if necessary,
a mandatory step is to check your understanding of what is expected;
motivate and help you believe in yourself.
However, in order for the delegation incident itself to occur at a time when the delegator does not have the formal right to delegate the task, some kind of prerequisites. Otherwise, it is unclear why people should do other people's work.
There are two such key prerequisites:
leader's authority,
autonomy of the performer.
Let's look at a simple example: a leading analyst was asked to develop an approach to business analysis for a project. And if the delegator is not the authority of the performer, then the performer will not be able to learn anything from him, will not want to help him, or be useful. In this case, there is no point in doing work that will require a significant investment of time and effort. This is why the authority of the delegator is so important.
And the second direction is the autonomy of the performer. Those. how independently the performer can work. If, in the process of performing a task, the delegator has to constantly advise, suggest how to do, coordinate, direct – all these quadrants in the left two columns – then this is not yet delegation, these are still other styles of work.
Delegation is one of the most effective management styles (located in the upper right quadrant). And we need, depending on the autonomy of the performer and the authority of the leader, to gradually make our way and build a path to the upper right quadrant. It’s difficult to do this, but it’s even more difficult to stay in this quadrant, and we’ll see how to do this later.
As Henry Ford said:
“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, but working together is success.”
Therefore, once we get to the quadrant, we need to think about how to stay and work together.
If we more or less understood the authority of the delegator when we talked about the difference between a leader and a manager, then let’s talk a little more about the autonomy of the performer and look at it through situational leadership model.
Autonomy consists of two components:
Competencies of the performer
Responsibility, or “commitment” – how committed the performer is to the task and is ready to responsibly carry out a given task.
So, if a person performing a certain competency is still a beginner, then, as a rule, he can be classified in the upper left quadrant, when a person has minimal competencies, but maximum commitment. These are enthusiastic beginners who are willing to take on a task to learn.
Further, if you move along the white line in the left figure, as competence increases, the comment falls. That is, the more a person learns, the less motivated he is to do this task as part of delegation. He becomes less interested. And in order to go through this hole on the curve, a leader needs to mentor and support a person.
Further, if everything develops correctly, you can gradually get into the delegation quadrant, when the performer has maximum competencies and maximum commitment. Here you can actually assign tasks and expect results.
As can be seen, different leadership patterns emerge along this curve. Those. At first we can transfer only responsibility for execution, then we delegate more and more steps for each task, and gradually in the delegation quadrant we already transfer responsibility for the result.
This graph can be very similar to the Dunning-Kruger curve, because the white line also shows the development pattern of people's professional growth. But the interesting thing about this model is that it describes not so much the relationship between senior and junior, but rather it can be considered in relation to each individual task. Those. For some tasks we can be professionals, we have high competencies, but for some we have very few competencies, and accordingly the commitment also changes. And here the task of the delegator is to determine which leadership style to choose depending on the experience of the person performing the tasks. That’s why the model is called situational leadership.
Since we have touched on the topic of growing competencies, I want to show you the learning pyramid. And here it is important to understand that the three lower levels are interactive interactive types of learning, such as
They can be used when delegated by both parties, i.e. both the performer and the delegater can learn during the delegation process.
A living example: on my list of desired tasks was to analyze approaches to conducting discovery, sort it out and assemble it into some kind of model. The Eisenhower Matrix task is important to me, but not urgent. Accordingly, it was on my ToDo list, waiting in the wings. Then my colleague comes to me and says that he wants to speak on the topic of conducting discovery at Analyst Days. I see this as an excellent opportunity to delegate my task. Accordingly, the colleague did a huge amount of routine work, looked at what different types of discovery there are, what they affect, she actually tested it on different cases, examined the model. She and I discussed it together and shared our experiences. In the end, we used all three of the most effective types of training, and both learned something.
But it was a good case study on how to delegate interesting tasks. Question – to whom to delegate the boring. Let's look at this through the Adizes model.
Isaac Adizes identifies 4 key characteristics of every leader, which are present in you and me in different proportions:
Entrepreneur,
Manufacturer,
Administrator,
Integrator.
The first, blue quadrant, is the Entrepreneur. This is a person who is focused on results and thinks globally. He is a strategist, he has big ideas, high goals. He sets these goals and figures out how to achieve them.
Thinking through the details is frankly boring for him; for this he needs assistants. And his right hand is the Manufacturer. That person who is also results-oriented, but thinks more locally. He is interested in understanding details. Those. give him goals, give him approaches, and he will move mountains, take on a lot, and actually achieve these results. But due to the fact that the Manufacturer often does not see the forest for the trees, he needs the Entrepreneur as a guiding star and together they represent a very effective couple.
The third is the Administrator, who, like the Producer, has a more local focus, but he is focused on the process, and not on the result. It is important to him how systematic it is, how correctly everything is done. Those. This is exactly the person who will put everything in order, clearly, correctly, beautifully, and check the quality and compliance with the details.
And the fourth type – Integrator – he is more people-oriented. It is important to him that everyone feels comfortable. Before communicating any opinion, it is important for him to find out what Vasya, Petya, Masha will think… And try to collaborate with them so that they all become friends and communicate, so that no one quarrels, etc.. He is also oriented more on the process, but thinks more globally.
Accordingly, if you understand your style as a leader, then you perfectly understand what tasks you will do well and where your weaknesses are. If you delegate the weak, the result will most likely be much better than if you did it yourself.
But there can be problems with delegating strengths. For example, it is usually difficult for an Entrepreneur and an Entrepreneur to find a common language, they have trouble hearing other people, and they have their own brilliant global ideas. The Entrepreneur and the Integrator may also have misunderstandings, and often because of this, the Integrators find themselves left out of the global initiatives of the Entrepreneurs.
I can give an example, again from my professional practice: An entrepreneur is inspired by the global idea of increasing the competencies of business analysts in the company, making them much higher than the market. He comes up with many initiatives to achieve this. To implement them, people who are essentially Producers help him. He teaches them techniques, gives them approaches, and practically removes himself from the details of these initiatives. Thus, Manufacturers help the Entrepreneur achieve results. Administrators, in turn, carefully put everything on the shelves. In our case, integrators were left behind, although in fact they could have actively popularized these solutions and approaches in society.
Let's try to summarize and remember all the models that we talked about today, so that when you delegate, you don't forget to think about them. We will move along the V-model from top to bottom from left to right.
So, when we have tasks that need to be delegated, the first thing we think about is what can be delegated. We look at the Eisenhower matrix, dividing tasks into urgent and important for us.
Next, we try to understand whether we are talking about leadership or management, i.e. we will delegate tasks or distribute.
Then we look at tasks through the objects of leadership, i.e. is it personal leadership, team leadership or management.
The next step is to look directly at our human characteristics. Those. how much authority the delegator has, and how much autonomy the performer has.
Also, using the Adizes model, we are trying to understand who the Entrepreneur, Producer, Administrator or Coordinator is in order to understand what tasks in these relationships should be delegated to each other.
Next, we remember that tasks can be strategic, tactical, or operational. And it is important to delegate tasks at the right level.
And of course, we think about who can be delegated responsibility for the result, and who can only be responsible for execution, and we will check the result. We directly apply situational leadership models to each task in order to make adjustments if necessary.
And the last thing that is marked in blue in the center is checking the quality of our delegation. Those. we look at how delegation of this particular task will affect productivity, quality, competencies, authority, motivation and, in general, the career of both parties: both the performer and the delegate.
Why did we talk about this today? Because most of us are already moving into the world of Agile development, and within our Agile teams we can delegate from each team member to each team member. This allows us to constantly learn within the team, making it more interchangeable and versatile, thus increasing its stability. And if you and I master the tools of delegation, we can really stay motivated and learn for quite a long time within the environment where we are.
