4. What is Delegation
• To delegate means to entrust (a task or
responsibility) to another person, typically one
who is less senior than oneself.
• Delegation is the opposite of
Micromanagement.
• Micromanage means to control every part,
however small, of an activity (or an
enterprise).
5. Why Do People Opt for
Micromanagement
• New (or Junior) Managers have a high tendency to
be Micromanagers.
• To give an example of how these tendencies arise,
consider yourself as a junior manager who has been
assigned a project that can’t be allowed to slip.
• Suppose you don’t interfere in small details initially
and suddenly find out that the project is at risk, and
so you step in to correct it.
6. Why Do People Opt for
Micromanagement
• Another example may be that you initially might allow
your team to work independent of you, but then you
might not like the technical choices they would have
made and so you start interfering in every single detail.
• The primary reasons why many Managers (especially
Junior Managers) have a tendency to Micromanage are:
– Trust and control.
– Comfort Zone.
– Experiences based on the Shorter Term
7. Trust & Control
• Trust & Control are the main issues around
micromanagement.
• You either don’t trust that a task will be done right,
or you want to very tightly control the outcome so
that it meets your exact standards.
8. Comfort Zone
• Talented engineers are of great value to the Team
when they are Engineers.
• But after becoming Managers they realize that their
value to the team has shifted from what they knew
best (Technical work) to what they are not good at
(Managing People).
9. Experiences based on the shorter term
• When a deadline is missed or something goes
wrong, the Micromanager will see it as a failure to
control the situation.
• It reinforces his/her belief that micromanaging the
team is an appropriate way.
10. Problems with Micromanagement
• So what is wrong about Micromanaging and
why you should avoid it?
–Attitude Problem.
–Very Stressful way of Managing People.
–Loss of Talent.
11. Problems with Micromanagement
• Attitude Problems.
• Talented engineers pride themselves on their
technical skills and when they become managers
they have a tendency of looking down upon their
Team Members.
• They slowly develop this habit of only seeing
technical flaws and judge people based on only their
technical skills (i.e., become narrow minded) and
not identifying their own weaknesses in Managing
people.
12. Problems with Micromanagement
• Stressful Method
• Micromanagement is a stressful approach for
the Manager and not a sustainable way of
Managing people over a long period of time.
• It becomes almost impossible for the Manager
to balance his/her time as more and more
projects arrive and his/her responsibilities
grow.
13. Problems with Micromanagement
• Stressful Method
• The inability in managing his/her time results
in the Manager spending too much time doing
technical things and having little time to learn
the ropes of management.
14. Problems with Micromanagement
• Loss of Talent
• Difficult to retain a team of good engineers if they are
not given autonomy over their work.
• If talented individuals are not given any autonomy
over their work, they lose motivation very quickly.
They feel they can’t make a single decision on their
own and that every single piece of work they do has
to be double checked by their manager.
•
• This leads to a feeling of being unimportant or not
good enough.
15. How to Delegate
• It is important that the person to whom work is
delegated is responsible.
• When you’re delegating responsibility, you’re still
expected to be involved as much as is necessary to
help the project succeed but you never take complete
control of the project and do not intervene in every
single detail.
• If a project is critical, a good Manager will sit with
his/her Juniors and discuss which meetings he/she
should attend and which issues need to be escalated to
16. How to Delegate
• This way a delegating Manager helps the Junior
understand his/her responsibilities in the new role and
makes him/her feel confident that he/she is available if
needed.
• The Senior Engineer thus might directly ask the
Delegating Manager to intervene and not feel bad
about it.
• Delegation requires trust and confidence in your team,
which in turn requires investing significant amount of
time and effort to develop their abilities and skills.
17. When Micromanagement is unavoidable
• There are times when you need to Micromanage
things.
– Lack of technical skills on part of the whole team, in
which case you need to think what is going wrong
(Poor hiring or very high expectations on your part).
– Poor ability of most of the team members in learning
new things (bad culture).
– Very important projects that cannot be risked.
• Important point is that Micromanagement is not
made a habit and must be avoided if possible.
18. Delegation – cultural influence
• Delegation and Micromanagement is somewhat of a
cultural thing as well, with Asian managers tending
to be more micromanagers while Western managers
are relatively good at delegating.
• A leader delegates while a boss will micromanage.
In our culture people tend to have more of a boss
like mentality.
20. Staying Technical
• When you become a technical manager you are
required to guide technical decision making. Your
technical skills that you would have gained over all
these years would now be required.
• If you truly wish to command the respect of an
engineering team, they must see you as technically
credible.
• Without sound technical skills, you may be able to
get into a position of leadership in one company
but your options will be limited.
21. Staying Technical
• When a team lead comes up with a new idea or
approach, it’s much easier to manage when
you’re confident in your ability to evaluate how
easily a certain feature will be implemented in
the given systems.
• Strong engineering managers can identify the
shortest path through the systems to implement
new features.
• The more technically sound you are, the easier
it is in determining the shorter path.
22. Staying Technical
• You might not have been the most skilled
and/or senior engineer on the team and that is
okay as long as you have the acceptance of the
majority of the team.
• That would mean that you have good technical
abilities and that you are a team player.
• Therefore, don’t underestimate the value of
your technical skills.
23. Staying Technical
• As a Manager most of your time is spend in
meetings, planning and administrative tasks.
• There is less time to learn and improve your
technical abilities.
• You will mainly have time to have an overview of
emerging technologies and a good foundation will
help you grasp these concepts quickly and
effectively.
24. Staying Technical
• Note that if you want to progress further in the
Management Path you will need to polish your
technical skills further.
• In most cases, one has to remain involved in the
technical aspects until he/she really feels that
they have mastered their subject.
26. Types of Industries
• Industries comprise of organizations that
produce or supply goods and services.
Industries can be classified as primary,
secondary and tertiary.
• Primary industries cultivate and exploit natural
resources (e.g. agriculture and mining).
• Secondary industries take the output of
primary industries and convert them into
consumer and capital goods.
• Tertiary industries constitute the service sector
of the economy.
27. Types of Industries
• Companies in the secondary industries are
mainly engaged in Manufacturing.
29. Industrial Transition of Countries
• The economies of countries are thought to pass
through various stages: from agriculture
(primary industry) to manufacturing
(secondary industry) to a service based
economy (tertiary industry).
• See next slide to see the transition of Spain’s
economy.
31. Advanced Economies - Movement
away from primary industry
• Another example which illustrates this is the
decline of agriculture in developed economies
over the last century.
• These economies have transitioned from primary
to tertiary industries (see next slide).
34. Relocation of Manufacturing
• Up until early 2000s, the economies of the world have
been undergoing two great changes.
• These two changes/trends continue to this day (i.e.
beyond the year 2000), but as we shall see later, there
are some significant additional changes taking place in
the last two decades.
• The first big change is that a lot of industrial production
is moving from developed countries (USA, Western
Europe and Japan) to developing countries in Latin
America, South-East Asia and Eastern Europe.
35. Relocation of Manufacturing
• Reason for this shift is cheap labor in
developing countries. Most manufacturing
factories require repetitive tasks for mass
production that can be performed by un-skilled
workers.
• Due to low wages a manufacturing firm
operating in a developing country will have a
significant advantage over manufacturing
firms operating in developed countries.
36. Example – Textile Industry
• The textile industry is the first example of
movement of manufacturing to where it is low
cost and efficient (See next slide and note how
over the years textile manufacturing decreased
in USA & USSR while it increased in Pakistan
& India).
38. Advance Economies – Move to
Services
• The second major change is that, in rich countries,
the balance of economic activity is swinging from
manufacturing to services.
• The service economies will produce a large
variety of products, from computer software and
advanced pharmaceutical products to television
programs and pop music whilst traditional
manufacturing activity will be in decline.
39. Advance Economies – Move to
Services
• Service economies will need to survive and
prosper on high technology and “creativity” as
manufacturing moves to lower cost areas.
• Therefore, research and development (R&D) is
the backbone of service economies. But
developing the workforce, infrastructure,
technology and financial capital to conduct and
benefit from R&D requires that nations first
develop secondary sectors.
40. Global Trends influenced by Policies
• The two trends discussed have caused much
anguish about “the de-industrialization of the
West” particularly in the USA where whole
industries seemed to be disappearing to Mexico
and Asia.
• However, this is merely the continuation of a
process that has been going on since the 1970s
and was accelerated in 1980s by policies of
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
42. Supply Chain Management
• A supply chain comprise of the full range of
activities that are required to bring a product
from its conception, through its design, its
sourced raw materials and intermediate inputs, its
marketing, its distribution and its support to the
final consumer.
• Supply chain management is the management of
business processes and operations, such that the
different nodes in the supply chain(see next
slide) collectively work in the most efficient
manner.
44. Supply Chain Network
• In reality, most companies today operate a
supply chain network that is far more complex
than what is depicted in the Figure on the
previous slide.
• A real supply chain network is comprised of
many nodes, that are connected via flow paths.
Products and information flows along these
paths to the various supply chain nodes, with the
ultimate goal of ensuring that customers’ needs
are met (in the most profitable way possible).
