It's about delegating, of course! : the delegation of activities as an opportunity for people and organizations

According to the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, Delegation is a transfer of tasks, functions, powers and authority, which is carried out between a person who occupies a higher position to a lower one from the hierarchical perspective, to operate in a limited field, ususally with specific goals.

The delegation process is one of the areas with more cornerstones in the development of an organization, as well as for the parts involved in the process:

• Delegating well provides growth opportunities for organizations and people, allows everyone to see the business from another point of view and focus on looking for other opportunities.
• On the contrary, delegating badly can lead to a difficult digestion process of the parts involved and even sometimes to a point of no return, as we will see later.

That is why it is important to carry out a delegation process in an orderly and transparent manner, properly choosing the parties involved, giving real empowerment and responsibility, and leaving an open door in case we need to return to the previous situation.

Whatever the motivation is, delegating is a task that sooner or later must be faced if we want to grow, both as an organization and as professionals.

Benefits of delegating

Delegation should be seen as a glidepath to search for potential assets within the team. Once found, it must be effective: 

• Empower him/her in front of others
• Make him/her feel responsible for each and every one of the areas invoved. 

This allows delegators to worry instead of taking on the work they previously did, better manage their time, and be able to start aspiring to other goals and objectives, while improving leadership skills.

Another of the benefits of delegating is the ability to learn and extra motivation received to whom functions are delegated, being able to extract the best from him/her as a professional. In particular, initiative, responsibility, and the expansion and consolidation of theoretical and practical knowledge. Ultimately, it is a covert form of training.

Delegating must also imply, on the part of the company, some type of bonus or economic benefit. The company must take the initiative in this regard and make some proposals in the mi term, once the person and the organization have been consolidated.

Looking for an analogy in the world of construction, delegating allows us to lay the foundations for subsequent growth, since it allows us to climb steps as long as the foundations on which we base that growth are well established. That is why the delegator is said to be the other great beneficiary.

Why managers do not delegate

But ... why managers do not delegate? There may be organizational, company culture, or even personal reasons. Here is a non-exhaustive list:

• Consider nobody can do it better: considering that you are essential is one of the main factors. Aligned with this point, there are those who think that there is only one way to do things well, and it is their own.
• Lack of trust: aligned with the previous point; in addition to that it may have connotations related to the honesty of the work that has been carried out until then.
• It takes time and effort: certainly in the short term you need to dedicate specific time, which can be from a few hours to weeks or months. That is why the opportunity cost must be worth it to the delegate.
• Avoid sharing knowledge: delegating implies an exercise in transparency, and sometimes this is uncomfortable. Although it is less and less common, there may be certain processes or ways of doing things that puts certain individuals in a position of force in front of other stakeholders. For this reason, companies must able to retain knowledge in-house, instead of it being retained in workers.
• Being the creator: some people have created a creature from scratch and it has become their modus vivendi: it is their baby, and they find themselves trapped in it, in a certain way. It is a feeling similar to what a mother can feel for her child.
• Out of habit: this is how it has been done so far and nobody has considered changing it. This statement reveals a bit of accommodation and passivity, so it should be avoided, in a way.
• Because there are things to hide: cases in which the delegate makes fraudulent use of the job, for his own benefit. Logically in these cases, the latter's last interest is to delegate. Here again the honesty of the people are inputs of the equation.

How to proceed when delegating

Where to start? Once the delegator is fully convinced, he/she must face the challenge of choosing the right person and establish a time-limited work plan between the two parties, stating the scope of the activities to delegate and defining the way in which the process will take place. Once this is done, the most complicated part remains, which is to monitor the delegate. For this, the following points are a must:

• Establish clear and measurable objectives: fundamental and inalienable. It allows to clearly establish the framework and priorities, not leaving the person now responsible disoriented.
• Establish a follow-up system: set up regular meetings on the objectives set above.
• Give guidance and advice without interfering, face to face and privately.
• Letting oneself make mistakes, since it allows us to learn and understand the whys.
• Publicly express the trust, in order to make it visible to all parties of interest. In return, this provides confidence to the person to whom you delegate.
• The delegation brings with it authority, empowerment and responsibility for each and every one of the business areas: both parties must recognize this point.
• Disappear from the stage: once you delegate, it is done with all the consequences, for good and bad. That is why the person who finally delegates must have internalized it and strive not to interfere in the activities of the person now responsible for the activities.

Suggestions for the person delegating

It is, most likely, the bittest role of those exposed in the article. You must show a firm and unwavering will to carry out the delegation, along with what we comments below:

• It is important to internalize that others will not do it in the same way as oneself, probably not so perfectly, but that the end result may be the same.
• Apply the 80-20 rule: that is, accepting achievements of project development percentage of 80% with respect to how you would have done it yourself, is more than enough.
• Avoid micromanagement, because it burns both parts: the delegator and the delegate, ruining the productivity of everything else.
• Publicly recognize the objectives achieved: very important to strengthen the confidence of the person in charge.

On the other hand, negative attitudes that can lead to the failure of the delegation process are the following:

• Always be on top of the subordinate and tell him how the work should be done: he must breathe and carry out activities in his own way, with his methodology and approach - of course advice should be welcome. In this sense, a coaching job is the most successful task.
• Criticizing the subordinate's work, especially in front of third parties: it causes frustration to the one who wants to take command, apart from the fact that it subtracts authority. On the other hand, third parties will not consider the newcomer the appropriate interlocutor until they are publicly endorsed from above.
• Finish delegated tasks yourself: again the message transmitted is of complete lack of confidence. In any case, and in any scenario, the responsible person is the one who has to finish the tasks.

Consequences of not delegating

And what are the consequences of not delegating? Well basically there are two consequences:

• From the Team perspective, lack of professional development, and therefore frustration. Sometimes it happens that not delegating causes potential gifted colleagues and workers that seemed promising to abandon the project, because they do not feel fulfilled or feel that there is a glass ceiling that is not possible to overcome.
• Stagnation of the company: the company will reach a certain critical mass that it will be unable to surpass. Managers can double, triple, ... quintuple themshelves when they don´t want to delegate, but there comes a time when they are not able to give more.

As a consequence of the previous two points, opportunities are lost, or topics are not carried with the required level of precision.

Conclusions

As a corollary: the delegation process must be the result of a path of responsibility truffled with the following ideas:

• Thinking more about the common benefit than the personal benefit
• Holistically contemplate how delegation processes can best be started

Some funny stuff as well: the Delegation Poker, a cards game thas was first played at the Scrum Gathering in Amsterdam, can help people delegating.  

For Spanish Original Version: click here.

Intrapreneurship: what it is and how to promote it within the company

When launching to create something from scratch it is important to clarify some ideas: 

• Anyone can undertake IT (although not everyone may have the capabilities), 
• Having initiative is NOT the same as undertaking, and 
• Undertaken within the own company is possible as well.

As part of the Innovation Strategy of a Company, giving workers the possibility of incubating and accelerating disruptive and innovative ideas or projects from inside can be a useful KPI to evaluate them. But of course,

• Is the company prepared to face this challenge? 
• Does the company promote this type of activities? 
• Does the worker have a red carpet for it?
• Is there an established system? 
• Is there a budget? 
• Is there a real will? 
• How does the worker benefit? 

This activity we are talking about is known as intrapreneurship: being an entrepreneur within an established and settled organization where clearly identified products / services are existing in the market.

Paradoxically and despite what one might think, being an intrapreneur is not an easy task, but quite the opposite. The purpose of this post is to give some clues to facilitate entrepreneurship from within. Intra-entrepreneurship requires: 

• A full understanding of the organizational structure and processes of the company, ins and outs of the processes, who and how decisions are taken, time required, etc ..., to be able to detect in a precise and solid way the weaknesses , needs, and opportunities for improvement that exist. 
• Networking with senior contacts, to help on how to focus the project, inform about decision-makers and enablers, owners of budget, where and how and to whom the project shall be distributed, provide leverage when required, etc. . 
• An extensive commercial activity of the project to present it as many times as necessary, ... and never give up. 
• High levels of resilience
• Digest high doses of rejection.

In fact, intrapreneurship impacts first on the person him/herself, since it forces his/her to: 

• Step out from the comfort zone. 
• A solid technical preparation of the idea. 
• self-training in new areas 
• Perform a commercial activity within the Company 
• Great ability to influence and inspire people who: 1. can lend us a hand to document the project, and 2. sell the project. 
• Resilience 

On the other hand, for the company hosting these employees, the internal fire of this person can be a gold mine, if the asset is identified and the project and the individual are treated with the proper care. The company must be able to generate the mechanisms to detect who, within the organization, has the initiative to undertake, and at the same time have a sufficient flexibility to address, if deemed appropriate and opportunities are seen, projects of this kind. After all, it is still a very cheap way for the company to launch new ideas.

The importance of surrounding oneself with a team

In this sense, the formation of a temporary small team that gives a hand to lay the foundations of a project is essential. We are talking about: 

1. A finance person to challenge the idea from an economic - financial point of view. In this regards, 

• There is some magic in the ability to convert an idea drawn on paper into profitability metrics. This shall be one of the superpowers of the intrapreneur. It is important to think that the project will obtain an OK-TO-GO from the Management only if the metrics are satisfactory, unless there are other metrics beyond money that play as well an important role, such us: quality metrics, social responsibility metrics, environmental, temporary metrics (time to market), etc. 
• Preparing a Business Case can be something very simple, or we can turn it into something so complex that it becomes a nightmare. In this regard, the recommendation is to focus on one or two KPIs, which are to be considered the most relevant ones. 
• In same cases we will have no other alternative than guessing some key data: it is impossible to have surrogate data for everything. 
• Risks: there is the possibility of arrive to the conclusion that our company is just a financial company since the level of precision expected is at the level of cents of euro, but do not worry: in reality this is really true. And this feeling can be even more tangile in large companies.

2. Experts in the subject- people with authority in the particular topic, named Subject Matter Expert: they will be one or more depending on the topic to be developed. Fundamental to provide the necessary technological dose and initial feasibility from the expert's point of view. With the arrival of technologies associated with Industry 4.0, the concept of SME has been expanded and other profiles such as Data Mining, Business Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, etc. are contemplated. 

3. An expert in obtaining grants & subsidies - some internal departments take care of this, or specialized companies that work on the basis of a comission, no fix rate. This third pillar can be a bit controversial - it may not be understood the idea behind this pillar - but certainly the external financial subsidies boost ideas and projects and break down mental barriers and silos: with money to make mistakes and minimize risks everything is easier. Moreover, the European Union is aware of the importance of Research, Development and Innovation as pillars to maintain the state of well-being, and that is why it floods huge amounts of money with projects of all kinds. 

4. A Sponsor: a person with Seniority and appropriate influences within the company to, at any given time, obtain the funds so that the project can really crystallize, because: Who pays for this party? . In fact, this is the first point that we must have resolved: 1. do we have the funds to launch the activity?, and 2. how far we can go with the funds we have collected?.

Everything described above will also need charisma, enthusiasm, smile, resilience and the ability to inspire and transmit and sell the benefits of the project to stakeholders. That is only in the hands of the intrapreneur. 

Minimum documentation to prepare: 

Before putting all the machinery in operation, the deliverables that we must have planned and well worked as an end point to the idea phase would be: 

1. A Word document (let´s name it Technical Specification) that develops the idea in a succinct but implacable, unappealable and impeccable way. The following points are suggested: 

• Cover and index. The cover shall contain the author and the index shall detail all the sections of the business plan. 
• Executive summary. This is a summary of the most important aspects of the plan. It should not be excessively long (one page maximum) and should attract attention to whoever reads it and wishes to know the rest of the plan content. The most attractive project data, high-level timing and the conclusions that have already been achieved should be highlighted. 
• The differentiating factor of the idea. This section should briefly explain the origin of the idea, how it has progressed and are the differences in comparison with the competitors. 
• Description of the market where the idea is focusing, in terms of: size, growth potential, competitive companies. 
• The strategy to follow. Consist on describing how to sell the products or services, and the marketing strategy to achieve the objectives. 
• Economic - financial information, which will be developed in detail in the Business Case: 

                   § How much the party will cost and who will pay it 
                   § What will be the sources of income, 
                   § Structure of costs, margins, expenses, prices etc. 
                   § Relevant metrics 

• Contingency Plan, in case the Project does not go well. 
• Annexes: resumes of the people who are part of the team, photographs, plans, market studies, analysis of failure modes.

2. An Excel document: a Business Case detailing what the profitability of the Product / idea is, and how it is achieved (based on what assumptions). As we have said before, it can be a simple excel tab, or a document that includes balances, products, raw material, 5-year income and expense forecast, financing, etc. 

• As a piece of advice, projects whose pay back time is usually longer than 1 year are not accepted. 
• The metrics to be evaluated in this case must be: ROI, VAN, TIR, and Paybcak time. 
• As we have explained above, not everything is measurable or the Business Case does not come out in any way - and yet it is worth to prepare it in order to document it and show evidence of why it was bookshelved.  

3. A Powerpoint document that explains the idea in less than 7 minutes. The information must have already been elaborated in the previous documents, so it shall not be difficult to extract it. It must include (non-exhaustive list): 

• Problems to solve 
• Solution proposals 
• Advantages 
• Market size 
• Timing of activities 

Get as far as possible with 0 euros

If we look back to what we have done so far, the cost of everything is 0 euros: only the time we have been invested (which, indeed, we could convert it into euros). But this motto (we have reach to this point without spending any money) should be a weapon that the intrapreneur must use to convince and launch his/her project. 

In fact, to validate the idea with a cost that does not involve a single euro to the company is the best way to buy other's  mental framework. In this regard and in parallel, we must take the path of seeking regional, national and international subsidies: 

• There are plenty of R&D& I funds, specially if we have disruptive projects in our hands
• In some cases those funds are returned to the public administrations, since no project deserves to be funded: that is, there is more money than ideas! 
• You need to abe to find the right support for the project
• It´s important to properly address the Specification, so that it is consistent in form and content - for this, it is best to get surrounded oneself with experts. 

Of course, this will lead us to generate a fourth document: the Memory, which is usually a combination of the previous documents. 

The importance of THINKING 

People, throughout the entire value chain of the company, must have time to think. Everybody.

We must respect those people who prefer to limit themselves to doing the ABC of the company's activity: fantastic if it is so, but even in the ABC there are opportunities and therefore continuous doses of innovation: 

• can we improve the existing processes? 
• How can we make them more efficient? 

That is why thinking must be everyday part of the equation. 

Following this thread, the suggestion is to live in the edge: that is, only living in the limit we will we be able to take the best of ourselves. This implies that the tireless search for innovative and efficient solutions must be a must injected in the veins in our day to day, regardless of the momentum of the company. At the end of the day, the success of the Company, mid and long term,will be largely attached to the ability to innovate of the workers: luckily or unfortunately, innovation and immediacy are the guillotines that mark the day-to-day life of companies. 

If we are able to bring in to the Culture of the company this vision of thinking and living in the edge, the results will arrive sooner or later. Without a hint of doubt!. 

Books that can help us get new ideas: 

• The Medicci Effect, which talks about how doing activities NOT business related can trigger great ideas for the bussiness.

Launch ideas with a start-up mentality 

Having the buy-in of the idea from the Seniors on day 0 does not mean that the support will remain. So then, how do we start? How do we fit innovation into the day to day of the company? 

Launching an idea with a start-up mentality can be summarized in the following points and in general it helps to maintain support throughout the entire project: 

• Reach a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with a zero (or minimum) budget 
• Take advantage of the company's existing resources (supporting staff), so that the cost spend of the company remains zero (or minimum) 
• Update the documentation based on the lessons learned, especially the timing of the project - so no learning is lost
• Pivot, when necessary 
• Be ultra efficient in all the initiatives you take: you are usually alone, so you will have no other alternative
• Report out what you have achieved 
• Provide the Project with a lot of transparency 
• Be humble, in general.

Corollary 

The entrepreneurial activity should be present every day of the year, in the day-to-day life of companies and the people who belong to them. The reality is that it is carried out but not documented, and teams are not aware of the the importance of capturing this acquired knowledge, especially for the future. 

It is preferable to start the innovative activity when the company's results come along: it will be easier to find support and budget.

When studing a new project, it is important to give the proper approach to the Business Case. Companies do NOT always look for an economic benefit: on the contrary, it can be of another type: quality, time, efficiency, etc. 

Attract / generate / launch ideas is not a simple task. The company must be able to generate the ideal environment so that those ideas are planted and rise naturally and spontaneously. All those involved in the creation process must be paid back somehow, feel involved and important, y any means. 

Stressing processes and putting them to the limit allows to go beyond. It is beneficial to screen the market in search of opportunities: going to Trade Fairs, reading articles, be in touch with the start-up universe, shall help. There are technologies on the market today that were immature 5 years ago - we must take advantage of this momentum now. 

When the time comes, workers are likely to have to adapt to new ways of working. It must be taken into account that many of today's positions will change or disappear, in any case it is possible that the company wants to amortize them, which does not mean that workers might lose their jobs: they must learn new skills to adapt to the new type of work that are coming in. 

At the time of intrapreneurship, one of the risks companiesy can face is to have too many roosters in the same chicken coop: in other words, ignore how to retain people with entrepreneurial interior fire. The ability to maintain this type of profiles also requires a great capacity for innovation by the human resources department. 

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The Uberization of Technology: Opportunity or Drama

Out these two alternatives in your city, which one would you choose if you need a lift from A to B?:

• Option 1, Taxi: you go down to the street, look for it, wait till one that is free, you do not know what is going to cost you, and the car is five years old or more.
• Option 2, Uber: by means of an APP you have the taxi under your house at the agreed time, you know in advance what it will cost you, they serve you water, and is a Brand new car.

Probably, and unless somebody has a particular interest, we would all choose option 2. Being said that, something similar may be happening with the technology: imagine you work for a big company and you need to find a partner to help you launch a project that you are not able to do in-house for whatever reason. What would you prefer?:

• Option 1: the large company (Tesco, British Airways, Ford, VW), contracts a global consultancy services provider to carry out the specific project in question. The services concludes being too slow, not customized and too expensive.
• Option 2: the large company contacts a small start-up that offers a disruptive, fast, flexible and cheap technology, especially in comparison with the Global Services Consultancy. On top of that, they are able to adapt to your company's systems, synchronize them and create an ad-hoc tool.

I imagine that the vast majority would decide to go again for option 2. Although both cases are a simplification of the reality, what I am describing is really happening and is real and happening in each and every sector and business: option 2 is gaining more and more followers. The big companies are realizing how complicated it is to innovate within their organizations, think outside the box and attract talent from outside, due to the high inefficiencies they have internally, lack of cross-functional processes and departments working in silos. And the Global Consultants do not solve the problem because they suffer from similar dynamics and their structures are rigid as well, ending up in a situation where they look for solutions outside to charge the end customer around 40%.

So, how to access this option 2 (disruptive technology and at a convenient price)? These are the existing trends:

• Alternative 1, screen yourself the market in search of those companies that can solve the problem: it has several drawbacks, among them the lack of experience and knowledge in the technology to be discussed, the lack of empowerment, and the lack of accountability by the
  people doing this research.
• Alternative 2, create an acceleration program internally (see example of SEAT): it requires your staff to have the necessary experience to mentor the start up. As an advantage, you have total control of the situation as well as the outcome of the activity.
• Alternative 3, count on specialized companies that capture this talent: in this regards, incubators and accelerators are targeting with specific programs big companies that need to solve complex problems that they are not able to solve, or cover the existing gap between the big company and the technological start-ups, 

Without falling into the precarious work that the uberization of the economy is bringing, the uberization of technology eliminates intermediaries, customizes the product and reduces costs ostensibly. There is no doubt that it is a stage that more than one large company will go through, and that we are heading into this direction.

In addition to this, another incentive: SMEs can also benefit terribly from this trend: fortunately for them, the uberization of technology has allowed them to gain access to this technology that was previously reserved only for large corporations. 

Being said that, it is important to keep in mind the following: as of today, technology and therefore the society, go much faster than the laws. And this is the paradigm that we are currently living: the massive amount of information we have, the immediacy of it, provokes the States not to be prepared and a late and incoherent legislation generating frustration among citizens.

Therefore, nowadays, more than ever, it is essential to have governors who have a precise vision of where we are heading to.