Splintered

Delegation is not a lost art. Instead, it’s an art we haven’t really needed before.

That’s because in recent decades organisational life has become splintered, and is in a state of accelerated flux. Structures and institutions like unions and apprenticeships, which used to mediate between different levels of seniority in organisations, have withered.

Middle managers, who were often repositories of tacit knowledge and standards, have been culled as companies try and “de-layer”. Companies have also chopped bits off themselves by outsourcing previously integral functions like marketing, IT and even customer service.

Technological change makes people redundant and disrupts business models, sparking wholesale restructuring and abrupt shifts in direction.

We change jobs more, too. My dad worked for one company all his life. I worked for three before starting my own business, and most of my late-Baby-Boomer peers held an average of 11.7 jobs by the time they hit 48, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2015.

This splintering and flux means responsibility for big outcomes is often shared among people who have been flung together, who may not even be in the same company.

Often, we’re working with people we barely know, which means that trust is lacking, as is a shared understanding of how things ought to be done, and of mutual responsibilities.

Getting big, important things done in these circumstances is tough. It’s not easy to hold people to account or have awkward conversations with them when they are practically strangers.

But it can be done. We’re still humans after all, and we respond to support, an exciting challenge, good feedback and the thrill of achievement just like we’ve always done.

Harnessing those forces in a dependable and repeatable way is what I call the new art of deep and deliberate delegation, and it’s what my new book’s about.