THEORY 72

THE EISENHOWER PRINCIPLE AND THE DELEGATION OF DECISIONS

Use to identify the decisions you should take and those you should delegate.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces during World War II and was in charge of the Allied Invasion of Europe (D-Day), so he knew a thing or two about decision making. Famously he said that ‘What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important’.

Eisenhower’s Principle has been used as a system of time management, but it’s included here as a reminder that not all decisions are equal and most can be delegated to your staff.

Level of importance

HOW TO USE IT

  • Use the Eisenhower grid to analyse the decisions you have made in the last month. How many of them should have been delegated?
  • Not urgent and not important decisions. Why are you wasting time and energy on decisions that are below your pay grade? Delegate them.
  • Urgent but not important decisions. You should delegate all unimportant decisions. But remember to provide guidance to your staff as required (see Theory 14) and monitor their progress. If a delegated decision has not been made and has now become urgent, don’t take the decision yourself. Insist that the person responsible for the decision deal with it immediately. There are a couple of exceptions to delegating unimportant decisions. You may wish to respond yourself to any requests from your manager or other influential stakeholder (see Theories 60 and 65) yourself.
  • Urgent and important decisions. These are probably the decisions that you should spend most time on. Your aim is to reduce the number of decisions that fall into this category. You can do this by prioritising all the important decisions that you have to make and keep track of where you are with each one.
  • Not urgent but important decisions. This category is the most important for two reasons: 1) If you fail to deal with them they will eventually become urgent and important and 2) Often these decisions deal with underlying problems within your team or area of responsibility. If you can remedy these faults you will reduce the number of problems arising in the future that will require a decision.
  • To improve your decision-making efficiency you will initially have to invest time and effort in changing systems, procedures and staff attitudes. Decisions should be made at the lowest level possible and staff should not be allowed to push them up the line (see Theory 71). Similarly monitoring and control systems should be in place to ensure that when a decision is delegated it is dealt with in a correct and timely fashion (see Model 56).
  • Be assertive and refuse to deal with decisions that others should make.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

  • Which of the non-urgent but important decisions sitting in my in-tray would save me the most time in the long run if I were to tackle it today?
  • Do I secretly encourage staff to pass all decisions to me because it makes me feel important/look good?
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