
Ask HN: How do you delegate? When? Without micromanaging? - ohjeez
I’m writing a white paper tentatively titled “Learning How to Delegate” – and once again I’d like your input. I want this to be real-world useful!<p>For any startup – or even software development team lead – a difficult-but-necessary transition is when its founder&#x2F;visionary must recognize when it’s time to let go of the day-to-day hands-on tasks.<p>You start out with your finger in every pie. You know every line of code. You have a clear understanding of the target customer, and the messages she needs to hear in order to buy the product.<p>And in the beginning, that holistic view is exactly what’s necessary. But it doesn’t scale. At some point you need to hire people to do the work, and who know each piece better than you do (an e-commerce expert, or a chief marketing officer). And then YOU HAVE TO LET GO.<p>What I hope to write about is the process people go through during this transition… and how they succeed and fail. Ideally I can turn this into a Dos-and-don’ts document that really does work as a guideline for growing a company and creating a healthy team.<p>So I hope you’ll help me (and lurkers) by answering these questions:<p>* How do you know when it’s time to bring in another person? What’s the point at which you say, “I can’t do this anymore; I need to hire someone!”?<p>* How do you choose the right person to whom to delegate a task?<p>* How do you respond when the individual doesn’t do it the way you think she should? Or as fast as you would have gotten it done?<p>* How do keep yourself from micromanaging? Are you aware when you’re doing it?<p>* What do you have trouble with? What have the consequences been?<p>For worker-bees: Have you ever dealt with a manager who was reluctant to delegate or did a lousy job? How did you handle it? Were you satisfied with the result?<p>(Give me some idea of your background – lead programmer in a Fortune 500 financial company, startup founder with 25 employees, etc. – so we all have some context.)
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nowarninglabel
Take a look at "Turn the Ship Around!" for a real world example of delegation
that worked.

As for me, it's about finding people who hold themselves accountable, then
giving them a clear goal but with broad discretion in how to achieve it.

The problem is when you have people who fail to hold themselves accountable.
Then they usually blame the process or the org or such. This usually requires
transitioning those people out of the organization or into roles in which they
have a micromanager to keep them responsible.

