‘MD’, Not the Managing Director but Management by Delegation

A managing director or any leader becomes unsuccessful when he does not delegate despite knowing that his team is capable of executing the delegated tasks.

Mayur Kalbag is an Indian Corporate Leadership Coach, Corporate Trainer and author who regularly does corporate training for businesses in Fiji. He can be contacted via email:

Rohitesh was a very hard working and an assiduous employee in the organisation. Even within his own research and development (R&D) team of a hundred people, he was considered as one of the most successful product specialists.

So when the time came to choose the new managing director, a unanimous decision was made by the top management and shareholders of the organisation.

And that decision was to make Rohitesh the managing director.

His entire team was naturally overjoyed.

The role was totally different.

He was now in charge of the entire team of eight hundred employees which also included five hundred workers.

Rohitesh was greatly successful as the team leader of his own functional team, but as the MD or managing director, the challenges were surely more and even complex to handle.

As time went by

Four months had passed by.

And unfortunately the atmosphere with the organisation had turned a bit negative.

The reason for this negativity was the fact that the managing director seemed to get involved in each and every decision of his subordinates.

Every morning he would be seen walking across to all his departments and attending all their meetings.

And then he would be seated in his office late to complete his own tasks.

“The MD is now Micro-managing everything.”

“We just can’t get the freedom to make our own decisions.”

“Even decisions regarding the appointment of a clerk have to be discussed with him”

Such kind of comments began to emerge from his own team leaders and even from those who were at just the clerical levels.

Things got out of hand when three senior managers from sales, marketing and product development offered their resignations within the same week.

And the reason that came out was their inability to work independently and the lack of motivation because of the absence of freedom to make their own decisions.

The over-involvement from the MD seemed to have made them take the decision to quit the organisation.

The news of their resignation went up to the entire senior management and the independent directors too.

The senior management got together and invited the MD too for it.

In that interaction, it was communicated to the MD that his style of functioning was leading to an attitude of fear, anxiety and lack of confidence towards making independent decisions.

Rohitesh was quite aggressive and started defending himself with his own arguments which he seemed convinced about.

And that’s the time when one senior directors, Mr Johnson stood up and addressed Rohitesh directly.

“Dear managing director, please understand that we are not here to reprimand or fire you,” he said.

“I, myself, have been a managing director of your parent company and have spent fifteen years in that role.

“I therefore, want to take this opportunity to share a few things that may help you in executing your role as the managing director in a more effective and better way.”

Hearing this, Rohitesh sincerely apologised for being a bit too aggressive in trying to defend himself and then silently sat upon his chair.

Mr Johnson then began sharing his thoughts.

The first and the most important thing that you as well as any ‘new’ managing director must keep in mind is the true meaning of the term MD.

The full form of MD is management by delegation and not just managing director.

As a head of the organisation, the first thing that he or she must develop is excellent skills of delegation.

But to do that there are certain parameters which make delegation highly successful.

These parameters are those which a managing director or a leader of his own team in an organisation must remember:

Character

Character basically represents attitude.

The MD must delegate roles and responsibilities based upon his knowledge about the attitude of his immediate subordinates.

As a leader, you will have to delegate effectively and for that you must know your people in terms of their behaviors and their characteristics such as they being sincere, honest, trustworthy and their confidence and courage to take up new responsibilities and execute them successfully.

Content and competency

Delegation or giving discretion to teams is also based upon the quality of knowledge and know-how that your subordinates possess.

A managing director or any leader becomes unsuccessful when he does not delegate despite knowing that his team is capable of executing the delegated tasks.

Also important is the fact that there are those who don’t even know about their own team members regarding their depth of knowledge or strength of their competency.

Control

As an MD of the organisation, the attitude to control everything must decrease and eventually fade away.

What may have been happening in your case Rohitesh, from the feedback that I have received, is that you wanted to take control of each and every decision at almost all levels.

This may have been due to your sincere concern towards wanting all the decisions to become successful.

But in the process you took away the freedom from your own senior team leaders to use their own wisdom and intelligence as well as their experience to make their own decisions.

And it is for this reason that three of them have decided to leave the organisation.

These three people from your senior team are extremely competent as I myself have seen their performance through the last three years.

Dear mister managing director, I will be hoping that you will redefine yourself and your role from being a managing director towards evolving as a successful leader who does management by delegation.

I believe that what Mr Johnson shared with Rohitesh surely must have made him bring a few positive changes in his role but I am also sure that these learnings that were shared could be applied to any person who is playing the role of a leader for his team.