Delegation

So I’m getting someone else to do my work?

Delegation is powerful. For new managers, it feels awkward.

If you’ve spent your career as an individual contributor, you’re used to being the one who takes the task, solves the problem, and pushes it across the finish line. Now you’re being told to give that work away. If you’re a bit of a perfectionist, the natural question is:
“How will I know it’s being done right?”

It feels strange at first. Make no mistake, delegation is one of the most important tools in your management toolkit. Mastering it is key to getting more done, scaling yourself, building your team, and increasing the total output of your organization.

Why Is Delegating So Important?

Picture starting a coffee shop.

In the beginning, it’s just you. You take orders, make the drinks, serve the customers. Then a great review hits the papers and suddenly you’re flooded. You can’t keep up. So you hire someone to run the coffee machine while you stay up front taking orders. Later, you bring on another to handle the register. You start spending more time on the menu, sourcing better beans, and planning the next stage of growth.

The coffee shop is still yours, but you’re not stuck making every flat white. You’re running the business.

That’s how delegation works in management. You stop focusing on doing everything, and start focusing on building the systems, and the people, who can scale the work alongside you.

How Do I Measure My Output?

Andy Grove lays it out clearly in High Output Management:

A manager’s output = the output of their organization + the output of the neighboring organizations under their influence.

Your job is no longer to measure your value by your individual output. As a manager, your primary responsibility is to increase the output of your team. Delegation is how you get there.

Delegating Well

Two common misconceptions to clear up:

  1. Delegation is not abdication.
    This isn’t about offloading work and hoping for the best. You’re still accountable for the outcomes. Delegating means transferring ownership of execution, not responsibility.

  2. Delegation is not micromanagement.
    You’re not handing someone a task only to hover while they complete it. The goal is independence, not surveillance. You need to tailor your approach based on the person and the task.

So how do you get the balance right? Enter…

Task-Relevant Maturity (TRM)

TRM is Grove’s term for a person’s skill and experience relative to the task you’re assigning. It has nothing to do with seniority in title. It’s about how confident and capable they are in this specific context.

Three broad levels:

Low TRM

  • You delegate the task with very clear instructions.
  • You check in frequently and guide progress closely.
  • This is intensive for you, but necessary for early learning.

Medium TRM

  • The person knows how to do the task.
  • You shift from instructor to facilitator, offering support when asked.
  • Feedback is driven more by them than by you.

High TRM

  • They’re fully capable and autonomous.
  • Your role is to set the bar, coach for excellence, and get out of the way.

The goal? Help your team grow from low to high TRM across the board. The more high-TRM individuals you have, the more hands-off you can be, and the more scalable your team becomes.

High-Functioning Teams

Your job is to coach people through these TRM stages.

One of the best ways to do that is pairing. Junior team members grow rapidly when mentored by seniors. Over time, they become the mentors. It’s a compounding investment that raises the capability of the entire team.

If you’re looking for long-term leverage, this is it.

Multiply your impact

There are only so many hours in the day. You can only increase your personal output so much. Delegate effectively, scale your thinking, trust, and support, and you can dramatically increase the output of your organization.

Delegation isn’t about giving away the work. It’s about multiplying your impact. It’s about building a team that doesn’t do what you would have done, but does it better.

What’s the TRM of your team, and what’s one thing you could delegate today?

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