Delegation

While delegation is necessary and acceptable, remember the Golden Rule ‘Delegate … but not too far!’ Delegation eases the burden at the top, allowing deputy event managers to schedule their own staff, and converts one huge problem into several smaller and simpler problems. However, it can also create a lot of new problems.

As an illustration of how simple decisions can radically complicate matters, consider organising a member of staff to do one vital job for an eight-hour shift. If we make the decision to allow that job to be shared and split into four, two-hour shifts, we suddenly have at least six problems (and with a little consideration you can probably easily add a few more to this list).

• Who is going to locate and recruit those extra three members of staff?
• Who is going to organise a reserve to cover sickness?
• Who is going to ensure that all the selected staff have the right skills and training?
• Who is going to organise their briefing and debriefing?
• Who is going to manage and supervise them to make sure one of them is doing the job for the whole eight hours?
• If there is an emergency, who will take responsibility for knowing who is doing the job at any given time?

And that’s just the sharing of one job. Imagine what would happen if this was allowed to happen through the whole event, and visualise the disaster that would emerge if all problems were multiplied by 600% or more.