The Delegation Ladder (10-8-2): How Managers Let Go, One Step at a Time

What is the Delegation Ladder (10-8-2)?

The Delegation Ladder (10-8-2) is a yearly habit for every manager. Today you do 10 activities. Next year, you keep 8 of them and take on 2 new ones. The old 2 activities are trained to your team during the year. Every year, 2 go down and 2 new come in.

Most managers say, "Only I can do this properly." It may be true today. But if it is still true in five years, the manager has not grown, and the company has not either.

When we sit with a department and write down every task, we often find a senior doing work that belongs to a junior. We see three reasons.

• There is nobody under him, so he does every small task himself.
• The team under him was never trained, so the work keeps coming back up.
• The thought: "If I do it, it will be perfect."

The third reason is the strongest, and the hardest to see.

Why a manager must keep letting go

A person is usually promoted because he is good at his work. The best operator becomes the supervisor. The best supervisor becomes the production manager. But his eight hours do not change. He still sets the offsets, still makes the daily report, still answers every call.

A title has changed. A role has not.

If he does not hand over, he cannot take new work from the level above. That blocks his own growth. It also blocks his juniors, because they never get the task that would stretch them. In the end, the owner is pulled in again to do things a manager should do.

How the ladder works, step by step

1. Write your full list of tasks. Include how often each is done, and who does it. Use the job responsibilities form (JR) for this.
2. Choose two to hand over. Start with routine, repeated tasks that can be taught: daily data entry, issuing job cards, the daily report.
3. Pick the junior and write the task into his job description. Name a backup for him as well.
4. Do the task yourself first, if it is new. Before you hand over, you should know the difficulties. Then you can guide the junior and spot the first mistakes.
5. Teach, and let him repeat it. He will make mistakes in the first weeks. That is part of learning.
6. Follow up daily for 10 to 15 minutes, before the day ends. Keep it short and regular.
7. Release more, as confidence grows. After three to six months he should be able to run the task alone.
8. Take two new tasks from the level above. This is what you gain.
9. Ask the junior to do the same one level down. The whole company moves up one step.

It is not a one-time project. It is a yearly discipline.

Is delegation worth the time?

Busy managers say, "I have no time to teach." The honest answer is: teaching takes less time than doing it yourself for the rest of the year.

A simple plan helps. Agree one delegation plan a month. Give the junior about half an hour a month for each activity. Over three months that is only a few hours. Those hours free many more hours later.

Two cautions:

• Check the junior's load every month. If you hand over but do not remove anything from the junior, you move the overload down. Delegation then fails.
• Do not step in too early. If a manager always closes the last part himself, the junior never learns to close. Let him finish. Step in only for the last small part, and only if a date is really at risk.

A manager who gives nothing away is not indispensable. He is stuck.

Delegation also needs the "how"

A task cannot be handed over by words alone. The junior needs:

• A written SOP or checklist.
• Access to the software, files and contacts.
• Patience from you. People who always did the work alone find it hard to let go, because mistakes mean rework.
• Your trust, along with a way to check. We call it Trust but Verify: you trust the person, and the report tells you if the work is on track.

Delegation also gives the manager a new skill to learn. He moves from doing the work to getting the work done through people. That is a different job, and it takes time to learn.

Monitoring is also a form of delegation

Not every handover is a full one. Sometimes the manager does not do the task, but he still checks it. For example, a junior prepares the price quotation using a price list, and the manager looks at it only when it falls outside the range. This is a middle step: the manager is free from the task, but he still sees the result.

After the task is running: three steps

Once a task is delivered on time, the growth path has three steps, each with its own target:

1. Improve the skill.
2. Make the task easier with software or a better tool.
3. Teach it to a junior.

How to start in your plant

1. Ask each manager to list his ten most time-consuming tasks.
2. Mark the two that can go to someone else first.
3. Write a handover plan for each: who, what to teach, start date, follow-up date.
4. Review the plan in the monthly meeting. Ask: what did you hand over this month, and what new work did you take?
5. Repeat every year. Two down, two new.