Delegation: A Case Study (II)

La version française de ce billet est disponible ici.

Previously, I wrote about a client who successfully found a way to delegate his work more effectively thanks to a better appreciation for his value-added as a more senior lawyer. In this article, I address another typical case related to delegation: a client who found it difficult to delegate to her team because she often found the work product she received was not up to her standards.

The client, also a partner in a law firm, was constantly overwhelmed with work. Despite her efforts, she was unable to reduce her hours to any significant degree because she was heavily involved in every single file her team worked on.

Together, we took a careful look at the situation: even though she wanted to take a step back from some of her files, each review of the work that her team produced led her to the conclusion that it was not possible. Often, her associates failed to understand fully what she had asked of them, which meant that my client had to redo much of their work. Time went by, but the associates failed to show any real signs of development.

Nevertheless, my client did not place all of the blame on her team: she recognised that the problems were due at least in part to her failure to pass on the necessary know-how to her associates. Therefore, she committed to a different approach to delegation, which involved her investing more fully in her team throughout the process:

• When she first assigned work to someone on her team, she understood that she had to take more time to explain fully the context, her expectations, and the likely dead-ends she needed to steer her team away from. Instead of sending a quick email, she determined it was better to invest a solid half-hour speaking with the associate who would take care of the assignment, to ensure that they were fully briefed on the file.

• When she reviewed assignments, instead of implementing changes herself and putting the relevant associate on copy of the email to the client (my client’s approach up until that point), she came to realise the importance of having another short meeting with the associate in order to explain her comments and respond to any questions, so that the associate could implement the changes and learn from his or her mistakes.

Even if my client knew all along that she should be working in this way, coaching helped her to better understand the necessity of making the time to do so, and therefore helped her to actually put it into place. Regular coaching sessions allowed her to transform her initial frustration — linked to the fact that she felt she did not have enough time to devote to developing her team — into a group of strategies to create that time in her schedule and to earn back many more hours that would be freed up once her associates became stronger and more independent.

To create that much-needed time, my client negotiated longer deadlines with certain clients, and learned to take slightly more time to respond to others. She developed additional strategies to better organise her schedule so that she would be interrupted less frequently and, as a result, work more effectively. Her efforts paid off, and she succeeded in creating the time necessary for putting into place her new approach to delegation.

The result of her work was a team that was not only stronger, but also happier: the frustration that certain members of her team had been experiencing disappeared once they could tackle a greater variety of files more independently.

In parallel, the strategies that this client had developed for creating the time she needed at the earliest stages of her change in approach to delegation continued to serve her well even after her team grew in autonomy. In this way, my client multiplied her efficiency gains and saved herself a considerable amount of time—far in excess of the time she invested at the outset of the process.

What opportunities to improve your efficiency remain untapped? Contact Jon to explore. If you would like to first know more about his qualifications and experience, take a look here.