The perfect delegation

In 1985 I was a young site engineer on a motorway by-pass. My boss, the site agent, was a gifted guy we’ll call Ben.

Some locals were against the project, and we had protesters lying in front of bulldozers and threats of legal action.

Ben took it in his stride. He had a rare knack with people. He handled the protesters politely, made sure nothing got out of hand and no one got hurt, and forged relationships with home-owners – even persuading one to let us set up our site office cabins next to his property.

But everyone has their Achilles’ heel, and Ben’s was paperwork. Every week he had to submit the Agent’s Report, a detailed, hand-written account of everything that had transpired in the past six days. Ben found it tedious, so he stopped doing it.

As the weeks went by the telephone messages from head office got angrier. They could see protests on TV but had no data from the site. It was a bit like Apocalypse Now.

Finally, Ben’s boss showed up and there was a big row. We could hear Ben being threatened with the sack.

Later, Ben sauntered up to my desk. “Dave,” he said with a smile, “I think you’re ready to start doing the Agent’s Report. You pull it together and I’ll sign it.”

This was unorthodox, as I was fairly junior, but I was keen, as Ben knew I would be.

Head office were a bit suspicious at first because they didn’t recognise the hand-writing, but they were happy to be getting thorough reports.

I grew two inches taller.