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Follow-Up

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Follow-Up

Follow-Up

This article is the next and last article in the series WDF – A Three Part Series.  The First article is Write It Down.  The next article is Do Or Delegate.

Back To The Audit

Throughout this series, I have been sharing from my experiences as a professional auditor for the Big 8 firm, Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers).

If you recall, the last article had me doing pretty well.  In life and business, once things seem to plane or smooth out, something new begins!

After I had finally figured out how to audit, the firm celebrated my new-found success.  They did this by placing me in charge of actually running audits.  That is, overseeing a team of auditors.  At the firm, if you recall, it was “up or out.”  Either get promoted or get “counseled out.”  Thankfully, I got promoted.

Do Or Delegate

I had just became adept at auditing.  So, I was excited to see the firm validate my progress with this promotion.

What did this mean?  It meant I would quickly have to go from do to delegate.

When you are in charge of audits, you are put in charge of an audit team.  There is no way for one person to undertake the completion of a major audit of a significant organization.  I would need to delegate.

But, I was reluctant to delegate.  Why?  Because no one would do the audit area as good as I could do it.  After all, I reasoned, I could do it in half the amount of time it would take for me to explain it to a brand new Staff B (basically, someone as inexperienced as I was a year earlier).

But, I quickly figured out that it was going to be impossible for me to do everything.  So I had to delegate.

Delegate, I Did

So, delegate, I did.  After my initial reluctance, I dove in head first.  Honestly, it felt good.  It was a welcomed relief.  I went from doing everything to delegating everything.  I delegated like it was going out of style.

How did it go?  Well, in an immediate sense, great.  A phrase I would learn later in life from a company owner seemed to fit: “Delegate at the point of retreat.”

How Did It Go?

Well, in one word, terrible.  It went about as good as my first audit did.  This time, I was in charge of things, though.

What kind of maniacal process was this?  I had just figured out my bearings in this Big 8 firm, and now they do this to me?  Yet, they had the upper-edge.  This is how things work in a big firm.  The firm was formed in 1854, so they had plenty of time to perfect their “staff development” process.

Basically, my first couple of audits being in charge were extremely rough.  My audits didn’t go perfectly.  Because of my developing working knowledge, the functional audit work was good quality, but the time component was where I fell short.  If you recall, there were time budgets for each audit area.  These audits would go over budget.

This brings me to the concluding piece of God-given wisdom.

Follow-Up

I had to learn a lesson, and learn it quickly.  Imagine this:

What would happen if you delegate or assign the audit of “Cash” to a brand new Staff B with a 2-hour time budget?  And let’s say you delegated it to someone who had never audited before.  Someone who might be asked to go make copies of the client’s schedules – and who hasn’t seen a photo-copier before.  Basically, someone just like me one year ago.

Well, let’s just say that you don’t finish “Cash” in 2 hours.

So, as the delegator, I had to learn to follow-up.

Follow-Up: In Practice

If I had any hope of making it to the next level, I needed to augment my new-found delegation skills with very necessary follow-up skills.  I knew, intuitively, I would need to reach out to staff and ask them how everything was going.

“How’s it going?,” I would ask.  “Good!,” was the usual response.  But, often times, the actual progress wasn’t as good as my optimistic team members indicated.  So, here’s what I learned and pass along to you:

  • Takeaway #1.  When you delegate, make sure the person has the necessary knowledge to do the task.
  • Takeaway #2.  When there is a time budget involved (and most of the time in business, there is) – follow-up BEFORE the budget has been used up.  Example: If you delegate a task to your staff, and it should take them 4 hours to complete it, then the staff should be 25% done in 1 hour.  When you delegate, follow-up with enough time to still be able to accomplish the task within its designated time budget.

I’ll fast-forward a bit.  I would eventually leave the firm (for good reasons) as I continued to develop in my career.  I would continue to learn the art and science of follow-up.  In one such company, I served as a Controller/CFO, and I had multiple staff members.  My right-hand person would be someone I would give some of the more challenging tasks to do.  And, when I would ask how something was going, it was always “Good!”  And, if I asked if something was done, most of the time it was “Yes.”

Well, later down the road, this person would resign and decide to move on.  I still remember the day I was going through this person’s desk making things ready for the next staff member.  Low-and-behold, I would find a very important task I had delegated hanging in a file folder – unfinished.

This leads me to my final takeaway:

  • Takeaway #3.  In the words of President Ronald Reagan, “Trust, but verify.”  This means to make sure you take the time to ensure what you delegated actually got done.

Summary

There, you have it.  No matter what you do or where you serve, be encouraged to:

  • (W) Write It Down.
  • (D) Do It Or Delegate It.
  • (F) Follow-Up.  Provide adequate instruction.  Follow-up before the time budget is over.  And, don’t forget to verify that the task was completed to your satisfaction.

In the words of Niehl Bohrs, “An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.”  It took me many, many years to learn WDF.  My mistakes were many.  And it took many years to begin to master it.

I hope you can learn from my mistakes and take WDF to heart.

Contact us.  We’d love to offer additional encouragement.

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About the Author:

Ken Moll is the Principal and Founder of Blue Elevator®. With professional experience spanning four decades, Ken has a breadth of foundational business knowledge rarely found – making him part of an elite class of professionals. Ken's passion is helping clients of Blue Elevator® get their “business to the next level™.”