Step 31 - Delegating To Shalini & Sam Walton's Over-The-Shoulder Style

This lesson teaches us on how to manage people.

To get the good life, we already learned the importance of building strong alliances and coalitions to get what we want. And if we find ourselves in such a group of people, we will have an urgent need for proper management. Sometimes we will be in charge, sometimes we will be in the middle and sometimes we will be under someone who is in charge.

What is the correct way to manage people? And this does not apply only to business. It applies to our maids, our cooks, our mechanic to whom we gave our car.

To answer this, we will have a look at the causes, when things get really bad (by the way don't confuse control with managing).

What makes Management Fail?

The most successful people couldn't just take things and delegate them to other people. The most successful people always had to have an active role.

When we delegate, we sometimes forget, that everybody has his own interest at heart. And if we let other people do things, which are not in our best interest, we don't manage the situation well. The first time the fault might be on them. But the second time it is certainly ours.

So if we delegate something and then disappear and expect it to be done, when we are back, we will find it in shambles, because the law of entropy makes something more and more chaotic, when we don't give it our attention.

For example you bring your car to a mechanic. If you just leave it there and tell him to fix it and you'll be back in a week, he will most certainly take advantage of you. Instead we got to tell him exactly what we think is wrong, that he should call and give you an estimate, before he starts working. We have to be involved.

The most important rule is: We can't delegate, what we don't know!

This doesn't mean that we have to master everything. But we need a basic understanding of everything we want to delegate, because otherwise it will inevitably end horribly for us.

Therefore there is a time, where we have to become a Jack of All Traits. Before we delegate something, first we got to learn how to do them ourselves.

We don't have to master them and it implies only things that are important to our lives success. Going to a doctor? Know about your condition, what your pulse must be and how the blood pressure has to be. Don't expect others to have your best interest at heart.

No one ever has our interest at heart as much we do ourselves. And for us to expect this from others, is not only naive and unrealistic, but it is going to be painful.

Sam Walton used a so called "Over-The-Shoulder Management". Not micromanagement where we are sitting behind someone all day and telling him what to do in every moment.

We need to let people work but every once in a while, peek over there. Trust, but verify.

If we want to rise above the masses, we need to be able to become above average and learn whatever is important to be learned.

The more we learn the more we earn, and the ability to manage people, is a valuable skill. Never ever delegate things you know nothing about.

Watching is a part of managing people and managing our own life.

If we get this right, we will be able to built highly competent teams. As we inject our energy and reverse entropy, by overseeing and watching it, we eventually built a group of massively competent people around us.

There is even evidence in parenting. If we are raising children and we give them no boundaries and they know we are not going to double check on them, they are actually less happy. The human brain is built to be socially interactive and part of this interaction is accountability.

Be accountable to yourself by not delegating things you don't know about. Put in the time to learn those for yourself. And then expect people to be willing to let you manage them.

If we have someone who never wants to be looked over the shoulder, we might not have to work with them. Eventually there are some people we have to let go.

And most importantly, if we get this part wrong, we are going to be on a treadmill and be doing everything ourselves, which is the quick path to the opposite of the good life.

Side notes

The man who can manage men, manage the men who can only manage things. But the man who manages money, manages all. (It means, if you can only manage things, like f.e. the cash register at McDonald's, you'll be worse of than the man who can manage people who are doing the Cash Register. So if you are a Manager in McDonald's, you are going to make more money. But if you can manage money, like investors, you manage all.

Questions

1. What is a nightmare story where you delegated something and didn't look over the delegated persons shoulder?

   Again. I delegated to a programmer to do something. He needed a couple of months, and when he was "ready", the project had already died off. In hindsight, pretty stupid.

2. What are some things that you need to build basic everyday life knowledge in?

   Car. Social Media. Analytics. Health.

3. In your primary career, what is something that you are delegating without enough knowledge? And you are going now to commit to get more knowledge?

   Analytics. Programming.