Let me pull a quote from an excellent post by Gwyn Teatro titled;Taking Charge: When Not to Delegate
But when is it important not to delegate matters to others?
I could not agree more with the concepts in that piece.
In fact I would call that type of mis-delegation nothing but abdication of responsibility.
As a general manager the small business / medium business space it can be too easy to claim lack of IT knowledge as a reason to abdicate this responsibility.
I would argue that as a general manager, whether your functional background was finance, engineering, sales or operations, that you have already acquired the knowledge required to a relevant level of detail in all disciplines within your organization.
Should IT be any different?
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Hi Elliot,
I’m delighted that my blog post was of value to you! Many thanks!
Gwyn
Gwyn,
Thank you for dropping by!
I know that I partially changed the context of your original post in my reference to it.
But a consistent theme that I have seen (and write about) is SME Owners or General Managers who choose to delegate everything that even sounds like “technology”.
They delegate to the point that they are truly abdicating any responsibility or knowledge.
And then they wonder why it costs so much, and why nobody knows what is going on, and why no one is satisfied with their IT service provider!
To your point, some leaders delegate what they don’t understand and that usually turns out to be a mistake
Gwyn, I would agree!
I would not expect someone to be an ‘expert’ outside of their own field of expertise, but most business managers take the time to learn the relevant level of detail about all facets of their business (eg supply chain, finance, sales etc)
So why do so many leave IT out of that?
Thanks again for dropping by!