Delegation

This is my first post on management practice and the topic is suggested by my peer manager Rahul.

DELEGATION is NOT (a)
1. An excuse to pass on work on us/excuse to pass on failure....
2. Planned approach to ensure I do not meet expectations and be at mercy....
3. Delegation or Containment in .NET :)

It is (b)
A tool for motivating and training an employee to realize their full potential...

(a) is an outcome of poor delegation and could also result in poor performance, job dissatisfaction, frustration, confusion, work overload & stress.

(b) is an outcome of effective delegation and could also result in better productivity, people development, job satisfaction and groom successor.

Delegation is the most commonly used and important skills with maximum impact on people development. Effectiveness of this skill is directly proportional to the manager being a leader. Hence it is worth investing in practicing and improving this skill.

Effective delegation is not about mentoring to get the job done but coaching the delegate to explore creativity, decision making and change management ability. In other words trust the delegatee with the task to take decisions and to react to the outcomes without seeking your direction. During the process take accountability of things going wrong and give recognition.

To ensure a task is delegated effectively use the same rules that you apply for commitments i.e. Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic, Time bound.

Example: If you ask an employee to review timesheet every day and ask peers to update the entries the employee will just do that and will never understand/educate the importance of timesheet management and the impact of poor timesheet management. Instead if you ask the employee to ensure ethical timesheet management, you will get to hear decisions, opportunity to ask questions, understand pains of an employee, validate action plan and set expectations.

Windows Mobile - Application Remote Control

This tool is built as a proof of concept to demonstrate how desktop applications can be remotely controlled using windows mobile. At this time the tool will control PowerPoint presentation by providing a facility for the speaker to see a thumbnail of the slide, slide number and conduct a presentation by referring to speaker notes all controlled by the device.

NOTE: This sample is provided "AS IS". It is a demonstration, provided for informational purposes only, and has not been rigorously tested with all environments and all scenarios.

Download source code here.

Add value to your email - Updated

The following code is evolution of what I wrote in 2004. The only change in the folliwing code is it will replace the word AEtip with the content, everything else including the content storage is just the same.

Code Copy HideScrollFull

Option Explicit



Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As
Boolean)

'Author : Amith Ellur'Date : 20 May 2003

'Idea Conceived : Dr. Nitin Paranjape

On Error GoTo Hell

'holds the reference to ValueAdd subfolder in my personal folders

Dim mValueAddFolder As MAPIFolder

'holds the reference to a randomly selected folder with in "Of the day"

Dim mRandomFolder As MAPIFolder

'holds the reference to a randomly selected message from the randomly
selected folder

Dim mRandomMessage As PostItem

'the case sensitive folder structure expected is "Personal Folder->ValueAdd->Of
the day".

'With in the "Of the day" folder you can create multiple folder to
categorize the content

'I have Definition,Info, Murphy's Computer Law, Thought, Tip

'So the header of the content becomes randomly selected folder name
concatenated with " of the day" example "Murphy's Computer Law of the
day"

Set mValueAddFolder =
Application.Session.Folders("Current").Folders("ValueAdd").Folders("of
the day")

'this is the escape sequence for Subject EOM messages

'if the body contains "<AETip Of The Day>" i replace it with content

If InStr(Item.Body, "<AETip>") <> 0 Then

'Mail format has to be HTML please set this on Tools->Options->Mail
Format->Compose in this message format.

'this check ensures i don't add the content while i reply the mail for
the second time

If InStr(Item.HTMLBody, "of the day") = 0 Then

'processing needs to be done only if i have any subfolders in my "Of the
day" folder

If mValueAddFolder.Folders.Count >= 1 Then

Set mRandomFolder =
mValueAddFolder.Folders(Int((mValueAddFolder.Folders.Count * Rnd) + 1))

If mRandomFolder.Items.Count >= 1 Then

Set mRandomMessage = mRandomFolder.Items(Int((mRandomFolder.Items.Count
* Rnd) + 1))

'just adding some format so that the content has a header and sending
using HTML format

If Trim(mRandomMessage.HTMLBody) = "" Then

'Item.HTMLBody = Item.HTMLBody + "<P><B><FONT SIZE=2 FACE=Verdana>" +
mRandomFolder.Name + " of the day...</FONT></B></P>" +
mRandomMessage.Body

Item.HTMLBody = Replace(Item.HTMLBody, "&lt;AETip&gt;",
mRandomFolder.Name + " of the day: " + mRandomMessage.Body)



Else

'Item.HTMLBody = Item.HTMLBody + "<P><B><FONT SIZE=2 FACE=Verdana>" +
mRandomFolder.Name + " of the day...</FONT></B></P>" +
mRandomMessage.HTMLBody

Item.HTMLBody = Replace(Item.HTMLBody, "&lt;AETip&gt;",
mRandomFolder.Name + " of the day: " + mRandomMessage.Body)

End If

End If

End If

End If

Else

End If

Hell:

End Sub

. . .

The next phase of evolution

Today when I look back at the posts I have on the blog I realize my personal development has been extremely swift with no/minimal time to consolidate and hence no posts on my learnings.

In these 3 years a lot has changed on my professional front, I am associated with the software support function and manage the support business for a range of products.

At this time I am planning to spend my next few months writing about art and science of a few people management skills around essential Delegation, Coaching skills, support model, cost model, resource model, etc.

For those who read my blog for technical stuff, I will not disappoint them either and will soon release the code I recently developed to remotely control an application using windows mobile device & .net compact framework.

Please do not hesitate to use the comments section to suggest topics and I will try to put together something from my experience.