Hopefully after reading “Delegation: What’s In It For You”, you realize the benefits and the need for every manager to use a delegation strategy. First steps can be scary. Perhaps an absence of delegation has gotten you to this point. It’s difficult to adjust and change when your experience is telling you otherwise. One of the biggest obstacles to trying something new is having a plan to do it. Simply convincing you of the power of delegation is hardly enough to make the transition easy from the way you managed in the past to this foreign style of management that you are not accustomed. The Delegation Risk tool is designed to help you put your strategy in perspective and protect those concerns you have that prevent you from managing through delegation.

Delegation can be one of the most crippling tasks for a new manager. New managers often cling to their workload as if it were their first born child, or any child for that matter. They protect and hide these proverbial children as if protecting them from the evils of the world. They fear that it can never be done as good as they do it. Therefore their misplaced pride leaves a disengaged workforce on the sidelines. Delegation doesn’t have to be painful. In fact any seasoned manager will praise this strategy as necessary. An avoidance of delegation is a rookie mistake when managing. This blog post is one of two designed to help you overcome that hurdle.

When I was a boy scout in my early teens, my troop had taken a trip to canoe down the Delaware River. As I partnered with my canoe buddy, we had to develop our strategy to navigate the rapids.  Every time we came upon new rapids, we had to work collectively to avoid capsizing and continue our journey. The rapids were inevitable. They were going to come whether we were ready or not. The only thing we could control was how well we worked together to make it through the challenge. Change is like this. We can close our eyes to the inevitable and hope we wake up from the nightmare or we can work together to navigate the obstacle and continue our journey.  This blog post is about managing your team through change.

With the new year approaching I am focusing the next few blog entries on potential “Resolutions” that any of us can proclaim. As a Generational Enthusiast (I have no idea what that means but some people like titles), I will focus this entry on Generation Y. Like a previous blog entry, “Tips for Managing Generation Y”, I will once again stress that if you are looking for rampant proclamations about negative perceptions about this generation or any for that matter, you are reading the wrong blog. I want to help build the bridge connecting the generational gaps, not push them further apart.

I was talking to a gentlemen at dinner last night. He was the CEO of a mulit national media company. We started to discuss some of the challenges that we all are faced with in modern business. Being management-centric, I voiced my opinions about how we are faced with a dilemma of performance malaise. Of course he wouldn’t settle for such a broad statement so he asked for deeper clarity. Being the extrovert I am, I happily obliged.

Recently I read an article on a Stanford University Research Study that showed Media Multi-Taskers pay a mental price. I felt it was a worthwhile blog entry as so much emphasis and pride is placed on one’s ability to multi-task. I personally have always been wary of those that feel they can do it all when, personally, I have trouble focusing (and no I don’t have ADHD) on more than one or two main priorities. Ahh, but that is the difference. I am managing multiple priorities. Multi-Taskers aren’t managing priorities they are trying to do several things at once.