Enabling Delegation and Creating Trust

 

We normally think about trust as a people issue, especially when delegation is involved. We can worry about a person’s motives - do they see the big picture? do they have the right skills? have they demonstrated they can be counted on? These are good questions. But they have the wrong focus. The real question is not “can we count on a person’s trustworthiness?” but “can we count on a person’s actions?”

Lean-management suggests that to be able to trust a person’s action we need to focus on what they need to make proper decisions. This includes:

1. information needed to properly make these decisions
2. any decision making rules that managers want them to follow (e.g., it is ok to spend $X now to create a savings of $Y per year)
3. the bigger picture view of what’s being worked on

Lean ignores the trustworthiness of the peoAbout this Blogple and focuses on creating a system that provides the above so that people can decide well. This is important because there is a fourth type of required knowledge – how to do the work itself, something typically the knowledge worker knows best.

After the decision, management needs to see the results. Visibility of workflow and results work both ways – they facilitate good decisions while providing validation as well.