The Agent’s Report

When I was a young site engineer I worked for a project manager called Richard. He was very accomplished, one of the companies top project managers and went on to become a director. He was a superb manager, really good with people. He knew construction inside out and was never phased by any problem, so much so he seemed to pick up the biggest and often the most challenging projects. As good as Richard was he didn’t do paperwork, in fact he hated it. He could see the importance of it though never seemed to get to it. One example was the weekly Agent’s Report; I knew he regularly got grief from head office for not doing it on time or not doing it at all. I often heard heated conversations about this in the site cabins when his boss, the contracts manager, visited our project.

One day, out of nowhere, Richard said to me – “Dave I would like you to start doing The Agent’s Report, I think you are ready for it. How about you compile it, write it up and I will sign it”. I was really pleased, felt important and uplifted. I was already pretty much flat out with my engineering duties though once a week stopped back for 3 hours to pull all the information together and write it up. It was hard work at the start as for some aspects I didn’t really know what I was doing though Richard was patient and talked me through it. After about six weeks he was singing them off with minimal Tippex (this was early eighties before word processors; everything was hand written with corrections made using fast drying white paint, or correction fluid, called Tippex – a stock item in every stationary cupboard).

Head office people were surprised and suspicious at first as the hand writing was different – the Contracts Manager knew what was going on though and after a while was happy as HO was getting the necessary project information and on time. Richard was happy and I was two inches taller knowing I was a few small steps closer to my ambition of one day becoming a site agent.

Richard was a superb manager, really good with people because he knew how to effectively delegate.

What could you delegate that would free you up for bigger things and at the same time give people under you the opportunity to stretch, grow and develop? Think about … what are you doing that you have outgrown, or you are not very good at or don’t like doing that someone else would relish a chance to grow into?

Having identified what to delegate the next challenge is how to do it effectively. There is an art to delegation, master it and you can forget about ‘time management’.

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