When you’ve got a really good person, or team, I think there are two choices you have:
I developed this model orginally for remote teams, where the bottom right would be too risky – I think with a team where you can see them, perhaps you are all in one office, or you can do Management By Walking About, then that bottom right style is also an option.
But in many cases it’s a choice between A and B. So let’s look at them more closely.
Option A is where you share the planning – so you know what the plan is, and you are happy with it – and then you leave the team to complete it, with no monitoring at all. This is effectively Empowerment, where you trust them to do it, and they can still come to you if they need help. There is no time wasted on reporting by them and you, or on checking by you.
Option B is where you delegate the planning to them – they can do the job however you like – but then they report to you as they go along, maybe every week or every month with a progress report (which could be face to face, phone, zoom, email, or even a sales graph or Gantt chart shared on line or put up on their office wall where you can walk past and see it). They can only go wrong by one time period of checking, e.g. a week, so it’s not very risky. (In theory you could delegate the job and check every day, but if you can’t trust them for longer than a day I think you’d be more likely to share the planning than to delegate it).
So – both seem pretty good. Which one to choose when?
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If you know more than them, or you feel they need help in the planning – choose A.
If they much more than you – or if you know nothing about the subject, choose B.
If they have a track record of reliably carrying out plans, choose A.
If they are clever but not 100% reliable, choose B.
If you want to develop their abiliity to deliver without much support, choose A.
If you want to develop their planning and problem solving skills, choose B.
If monitoring is difficult – e.g. they are off site or even abroad, or it’s a creative project that’s all in someone’s head, – choose A. Though there are always ways to check on progress. e.g. that online Gantt chart. As long as you have sufficient granularity to keep an eye on progress.
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Finally, I think this shows that it doesn’t matter too much which one you pick – as long as you don’t go top left and become a micro-managing control freak, most people will be delighted!
