Of all the joys and headaches that come with raising 3-year-old triplets, one thing is Windex-clear to Richard Carrigan: Neither he nor his wife can do it all.
Often it takes parents, baby sitters and even a few trusted friends to help carry the load. Yet when it comes to running his family's growing manufacturing business in Des Plaines, Ill., Carrigan -- like many small-business owners -- is still learning how to let go.
Founded by Carrigan's grandfather in 1953, United Displaycraft designs and builds in-store marketing displays for big companies like Hasbro, American Greetings and Kraft.
Young Rich spent a few years in technology consulting after college before joining United's information technology department in 1997, when the company was doing $19 million per year in sales.
It's been a bullet train ever since. United now pulls in $30 million annually and has 250 employees. Two months ago the mild-mannered 34-year-old rose from head of operations to company president. With the snazzy new title come the additional duties of dealing with miffed customers, attending more industry association meetings and plotting United's future growth strategy.
Yet despite these additional demands on his time, Carrigan says he finds it hard not keep a close eye on day-to-day operations in United's 225,000-square-foot factory. "There's a lot more public responsibilities [in my new role]," he says. "At some point I'm going to be overloaded."
Letting managers manage might be as critical to a company's success as having great products or a slick sales squad. As brilliant and revolutionary as Bill Gates and Michael Dell are, they still have to rely on capable operators like Steve Ballmer and Kevin Rollins to keep Microsoft and Dell firing on all circuits.
Delegating also gives the next generation of managers a chance to hone their skills in the trenches.
Problem is, offloading even a sliver of responsibility is surprisingly hard to do, especially for entrepreneurs-cum-managers. "It is a surrender of control," says John Baldoni, head of Baldoni Consulting and author of Great Motivation Secrets of Great Leaders. "If you want to work 160 hours a week, don't
Burnout isn't the only danger here. Minding every last inch of the store eats into time better spent mapping out a company's growth strategy.
It also undermines employees' sense of accountability: If the head honcho is going to call all the shots -- and clean up all the messes -- then what's the point of trying very hard?
The best delegators, says Baldoni, are explicit when laying down new mandates but know enough to get the hell out of the way and let people figure out how to meet goals and solve problems themselves. "It's an affirmation of human dignity," he says.
For his part, Carrigan plans to shake up his company's org chart -- a potentially smart, but inherently tricky, move. "Even if I could free up 15 to 20 hours a week, that's a big deal," he says.
Here's the plan. In his prior role as head of operations, Carrigan was in charge of three departments: design, engineering and job estimating. In his new scheme as president, the head of design will oversee the engineering department, and the "general manager" will govern both the estimating arm and overall daily production.
Result: Those three reporting entities will shrink to two. By doing that, Carrigan hopes to free up the extra time he needs to, say, fly to Providence, R.I., to hammer out quality-control issues on a recent project for toymaker Hasbro.
Carrigan's main concern, ironically, is that United's head designer -- who now will have an extra department to monitor -- is himself hands-on to a fault. "Instead of asking a freelancer to do [a drawing], he'll just draw it himself because he likes it," he says, chuckling. "This is going to force him to delegate."
Likewise, says Carrigan, the GM will have to relinquish some control of the factory floor if he is to succeed in running the estimating unit: "Delegation begets more delegation."
That's the idea. Still, the mild-mannered Northwestern MBA knows he has a long way to go. When the head of the United's IT department is out sick or goes on vacation, "I'm her backup," he sheepishly admits.
Old habits die hard.
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