Do your people, staff and volunteers, feel they have permission to act when they see an issue?
I recently wrote two posts on delegation, Delegate or Die and How to Delegate, that laid out the reasons you must delegate and gave the steps to delegation.
Giving permission to talk outside their department silo and then giving permission to act on their own are important elements of delegation.
Recently, while filling in as a temporary Executive Director, I came across two situations that illustrate giving permission.
In the first case, three departments shared a detached storage facility. The maintenance department used it as a workroom and for equipment storage. The resale store used it to store excess inventory and display equipment. One of the ministry departments wanted to use it as a club room. Each department was upset over the other’s activities.
There was a lot of whining. Each department kept coming to me saying, “See what they are doing. They keep moving my stuff. Tell them to…”
In the second situation, each department conducted separate marketing efforts. The resale store was advertising availability and sales. The development department was promoting volunteerism, writing newsletters, and conducting fundraising events. The social media department maintained the website/blog, FaceBook, and Twitter sites and reported directly to the director. No one talked to anyone else.
The marketing budget was running out of control. There was no common theme. There was no joint marketing. There were no metrics, so there were no tradeoffs.
The problem was obvious.
The staff and volunteers did not think they had permission to talk to one another, especially across departments.
In a small organization, everyone knows everyone and talks with everyone, including the Executive Director. But as an organization grows, the number of interactions grow exponentially. Things get more complex and require more documentation. There are more procedures, People are less free to communicate. Inter-department problems get pushed up to the top for decisions.
Eventually, the problems overwhelm the Executive Director and operations begin to stagnate.
The solutions:
In the facility case, I said, “You, you, and you meet together on Monday at 11 in my office (I don’t go in on Monday.) Leave a paper on my desk showing how the space you will allocate space and how you will resolve any future issues.” I suggested that they either meet on a regular basis or pick one of them to decide conflicts.
This concept had never crossed their minds. They just needed permission.
In the marketing case, we called in a couple of board members who had marketing experience. They did a quick top-level assessment of the situation (no master schedule, no common view of the marketing budget across departments, and no communication.) They said, “You, you, and you meet once a week to discuss marketing opportunities. Build a master calendar and bring it to us. Bring us all your budgets so we can have a common view of the situation. Then we can all discuss metrics.”
Again, the thought that they could just meet and resolve their issues had not crossed their minds. They just needed permission; permission to talk; permission to get help.