As a growth strategist advising companies and owners, I have always counseled mid to high-level executives to delegate lower-level tasks so that they could fully concentrate on “heavy lifting” brain work. In the old days (circa late ‘90s), an executive’s time was best spend in the meeting and not scheduling the meeting.  Support personnel are there to answer phones, make travel arrangements and prepare meeting documents.  This was a basic management principle introduced in the ‘80s that had long been converted into gospel.

All my professional life, I’ve heard my inner consulting voice whispering “Delegate, delegate, delegate.”  Of course, being a bit on the controlling side, I constantly find myself handling most of my own office tasks like scheduling, requesting information, returning phone calls, researching etc.  Of course, I never want to be accused of being the “plumber with a backed-up sink,” so I decided to heed my own advice.  

Two months ago, I started making an audit of all of my mundane daily activities in order to determine what I can safely pass along to assistants.  After all, that’s what assistants should do, right?  I wasn’t too far along into my audit before I start questioning the logic behind delegation.  I am now convinced that the basic formula for determining what tasks are worthy of delegation has been forever changed by technology.  When using a time and efficiency scorecard, self-reliance deserves better marks than delegation.  During the course of my experiment, I discovered that it was actually taking me more time to explain and delegate a task than to just use available technology to take care of it.  It seems that most of the daily activities that would have been handled in the past by an assistant are now best handled with the aid of few handy electronic tools.

Let’s consider some of my most critical daily duties: 

First task:  Scheduling a Meeting

Usually I handle all of my calendaring through Microsoft Outlook.  It takes minutes to record an appointment, email an invitation and then hop on the Internet to send a list of directions to my PDA using Mapquest.com.  Taking the slow route, I first emailed my assistant about my intent to schedule an appointment.  After discussing the merits of various preferred dates, we proposed and confirmed an appointment with my client, who called later that day to reschedule.  Another conversation with my assistant on preferred dates and the chain of events rattled again.  In the end, it took more time and effort to work through my assistant than if I had just called my client directly.   

Next Two:  Answering the Phone/Returning a Call

Next, I charged my assistant with two tasks that were created just for delegating – answering the phone and returning a call.  Surprisingly, they turned out to the biggest time wasters.  Callers needed to speak to me, not my assistant, so there wasn’t much she could tell the caller other than that I would get back to them, which they probably could have guessed anyway.  Additionally, there wasn’t much lag time between my assistant’s return call and mine, making the whole process seem even more futile.  I wasted more time asking my assistant if she had called someone back and what they had said, when I could have just asked them myself.  Furthermore, I questioned whether the extra “customer service” was actually more of a nuisance to the caller.  There was a time when an unanswered phone was seen as unprofessional. However, today I think if given a choice between speaking with an assistant and just leaving a voicemail, I would much prefer the voicemail.  That way, I can leave my message exactly the way I want it and know that it is delivered intact just the way I recorded it.  Most assistants just inform you that your client is out of the office and ask if you’d like to be transferred to voicemail. 

Last Chance:  Good Old-Fashioned Research

Before reverting to my modern ways, I decided to delegate one last task – researching publications for advertising prices. 

After emailing a lengthy paragraph of instructions to my assistant (I’m big on clear and precise instructions), my assistant responded with a list of links to publication websites.  While meant to be helpful, I found it difficult to navigate through the maze of links.   It was like starting in the middle of a book and having to figure out what part of the story you’re in.   In the time it took to figure out where the links were leading me, I could have found my information through a simple Google search and moved on to my next task.

I’m not saying that assistants aren’t important or needed – somewhere in Downtown Los Angeles a corporate assistant is holding a triple vanilla soy latte and shivering in fear – no, not at all.  Today’s executives need a new breed of assistant.  Gone are the days of doers.  What executives need are thinkers.  Decades ago, technology replaced the factory worker.  Now, the task-minded assistant has been replaced with online tools like Google, Map Quest, ACT and others.  The modern assistant should be able to make decisions and use deductive reasoning. Given the amount of information readily available at the click of a mouse, they must have the aptitude to research and identify options, make appropriate evaluations and then present executives with a well thought-out summary in an easy-to-read format (not just web links).

I’ve since returned to my tech-centered, self-controlling ways. I can handle mundane lower-level tasks; what I really need is someone who can take on some of this "lighter" brain work.

Lori Williams has released two new e-books available in PDF format and on Amazon for Kindle. Visit www.BusinessSimplyPut.com and click in ebooks to learn more.