Stop delegating. What you can learn from Joe DePinto, CEO of 7-eleven

http://blog.inklingmarkets.com/2010/02/ceos-getting-dirty-what-you-can-learn.html

by wglb • 16 years ago

41 15 16 years ago

blog.inklingmarkets.com

gchpaco• 16 years ago

"Stop delegating" had me thinking of that "micromanagement is god" jackass a couple weeks back. The gist of this is that DePinto spent a bunch of time working at doing the same stuff normal worker bees do to learn more about the business, which is quite sensible.

GFischer• 16 years ago

I agree that the title is misleading, but this is good advice.

On the company I work for (insurance sector), they tried to implement an "internship" program in which people from different parts of the company (especially software development) would spend some time in different parts of the company, so we'd learn what they do and how our work impacted theirs (greatly in the case of software development of course).

Sadly it was cancelled, but I thought it was a great idea at the time.

JoeAltmaier• 16 years ago

I worked a saturday in manufacturing years ago. Quite different from software development! I learned they entered the hard disk badspot table into the bios three times during testing! We went right back and fixed the format tool to preserve the entries. Saved manhours of work per week.

minouye• 16 years ago

Reminds me of the founder of JetBlue, David Neeleman. He used to help with bags, serve drinks, and frequently got into the nitty-gritty.

jfarmer• 16 years ago

This isn't not delegating. Not delegating would be installing yourself as a manager of an underperforming store, say.

Instead, this is an application of Genchi Genbutsu. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genchi_Genbutsu

j_b_f• 16 years ago

Related Sivers article: http://sivers.org/trust-but-verify

jwecker2• 16 years ago

My rules of thumb:

* Don't ask anyone to do something you're not willing to do yourself (willing doesn't mean that it's smart for you to be the one doing it)

* Don't ever delegate by abdicating responsibility

* If there isn't any follow-up, it wasn't really delegated.

* Allow properly aligned incentives to do a lot of the "delegating" for you.

[edit- formatting]

evanrmurphy• 16 years ago

I'm finding it hard to reconcile these rules with comparative advantage, but maybe "delegating" refers only to subordinates and not to divvying among cofounders, which is what I'm thinking of. (Also, your "willing doesn't mean that it's smart for you to be the one doing it" note somewhat addresses this.)

padmanabhan01• 16 years ago

//Don't ask anyone to do something you're not willing to do yourself

So what happens to the kind of work that one would rather not do, but needs to be done?

ajdecon• 16 years ago

"Rather not" isn't necessarily the same as "unwilling".

If it's work you'd simply find unpleasant or boring but would still do if it had to be done, delegating it is not a bad thing. (With perhaps the caveat that you should do it at least once so you fully understand it.)

If it's work that you would not do under any circumstances, the proper question might be: why are you allowing your company to do this? Or why are you working for a company that does this?

quellhorst• 16 years ago

From the video, the CEO is upset they are throwing away donuts. Donuts are unhealthy and they shouldn't be giving those away to poor people anyway.

metamemetics• 16 years ago

http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/study_low_in... "low income equals high obesity"

ektimo• 16 years ago

in this clip he learns that folks working at the stores feel they aren't really part of 7-eleven as a whole company and can't advance anywhere

Reminded me of http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38690

LOWELL, MA–Jeremy Novato, a recent graduate of a well-respected Lowell high school, has secured a position with the McDonald's Corporation, a high-ranking Fortune 500 company. "I'm tremendously excited to have this opportunity to work with the world's number-one restaurant chain," said Novato, 18, pouring ketchup into a large metallic pump dispenser at the $41 billion company's Exeter Road branch Monday."

johnl• 16 years ago

I would delegate but with feedback. After a while the guy is going to get in everyone's way. And by feedback I would mean more than numbers crossing his desk.

Stop delegating. What you can learn from Joe DePinto, CEO of 7-eleven

Related Stories