I recently came across an article that really hit home for me. It’s titled “How to determine if you delegate enough.” To quote the article:
How do I know when I am delegating enough? I think that the answer is very simple: You are not delegating enough if the questions that you are getting are easy for you to answer.
If your subordinate comes to you with an easy question … the possibility is that the answer was indeed simple but you didn’t share the necessary information, requiring the subordinate to ask the question. This may mean you retain some information in order to feel that you have not lost control, but it causes your people to be frustrated and to feel that you don’t trust them. It’s important for you to disclose to your subordinates all of the information that they need to do their jobs.
Shifting from “doer” to manager & avoiding “doing nothing” as a manager
In my recent role change, I’m now managing a larger range of projects and a larger group of people. I’ve always admired managers and executives who could get their hands dirty. I think this garners respect and establishes credibility with any manager. In this new role, my biggest challenge is identifying the tasks to take on myself and to delegate to my staff. While there are many simple projects and tasks I am perfectly capable of handling without the help of my staff, I need to be able to identify which tasks make the most sense for me to be focusing my time on.
Enter RescueTime - How I measure where I’m spending my time
I recently came across a new free service called RescueTime. It’s a web-based service with Mac and PC “listeners” that install quickly and effortlessly so I can monitor my application usage and website visits. The benefit here is that my “doer” tasks vs. my “management” tasks are clearly divided between the websites and applications I use:
- For example: firing up the Mac OS Terminal app and hopping on a server to move some files around is clearly a “doer” role. I file the “Terminal” app as a “development” task/app.
- On the other hand, reviewing Omniture web analytics data is most definitely a web marketing role, so I flag all Omniture sites as “web marketing” tasks.
- Email, Excel, Visio, Microsoft Projects are all tagged as “eBusiness” applications.
The RescueTime Dashboard
Since I have a dedicated laptop specifically for work, the only time I really use it is for work-based functions. Since the RescueTime “listeners” time out after 2 minutes of inactivity, the service provides a very accurate portrayal of the true time spent working (for me, at least). Of course, when I’m in meetings and the laptop is idle, this “work time” is not captured. Since the majority of my job involves a computer, it’s pretty safe to say that it captures most of my work-related activities on any given day:
Below we see (for the week of March 30th) I spent 55 hrs and 50 minutes working.
Below we see how my 55 hrs and 50 minutes that week broke down into the “tagged” sites and applications I used:
RescueTime then tells me how efficient I’ve been based on the above data collection and my account settings (I rate “ebusiness” as more efficient than “development”):
I’m still spending too much time “doing” and not delegating
When logged into the RescueTime dashboard, you can hover over the above red bars to see the total time spent on the tags. “development” was comprised of more than 11 hours of work. That’s 20% of time dedicated to “doing” which is much too high. RescueTime has also calculated my efficiency. Efficiency is described as:
A score based on the ratio of productive activity to distracting activity. To improve this, spend a higher percentage of time on productive tasks.
Without the RescueTime software and web service, I’d have no way of quantifying this information other than going by gut feel. Now that I know I’m spending too much time, I am not worrying as much about being perceived as a manager who doesn’t like getting their hands dirty. RescueTime is enabling me to focus on more accurately managing and delegating the tasks and projects for my staff.
