Expert's Panel

A collection of timely and important topics posed to our panel of experts.

What are good activities for a Product Manager to delegate?

 (ep10139)
1. I think the real question here is whom do you have to delegate it to. Usually you don’t have your own resources and you will have to delegate to someone who doesn’t report to you. Determine if it is interesting to them. They probably have five or six projects going and you need to give them something that has value to them if they are going to do it well and on a timely basis. If you’re delegating forecasting for example, make it clear that they get credit for it, but you are making use of the data. That is probably a bigger issue than what tasks you would like to delegate.
2. I think it is good to delegate those day-to-day activities like solving a particular customer problem. Maybe you can find someone in customer service that can do that as well as you can. You should not be the project manager for new product development; it should probably reside in engineering. You are certainly a participant in that process, but if you try to be the manager of such things you will find your freedom of time application gone. These approaches will allow you to apply more of your time to strategic issues.
3. The question may be not so much what you delegate, but what do you not delegate. What are the things that you don’t want out of your control. Number one may be communication and relationships with certain personnel in your key customers. If you decide you don’t want to get on an airplane ever time you should, you might as well start looking for another job.