One of the key skills for the leaders of growing businesses is to 'get' the distinction between delegation and abdication.

Many managers and business leaders fall into one of two extreme categories:

They delegate too little and try to do it all themselves or they give too much away, abdicating both their responsibilities and the prerogatives of power.

As their businesses grow, many entrepreneurs try to micro-manage. We've all heard the term, but too often we fail to recognize the symptoms until it's too late. For entrepreneurs, the sense that this is 'my company' or the belief that 'if I want it done right I have to do it myself' causes them to hold on too tightly and limit their results.

At the opposite end are managers who 'hire someone to do that' and abdicate their role as supervisor and leader. One of the first employees many entrepreneurs hire is a bookkeeper. As entrepreneurs, they want to focus on building the business and recognize that their time is not well used on the details of bookkeeping. So, they hire someone and never think about it again.

Big mistake! Every month or so, the newspapers carry a story about someone embezzling from a small company. Too often, unsupervised and unsupported, the bookkeeper simply took advantage of an opportunity the owner created.

Effective managers delegate, but they also know that 'what gets measured, gets done'. They monitor and train, they supervise and support their people. You can't do it all yourself and simply turning the job over to someone else and abdicating your role as manager is not the answer.