Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates returned to the high school he attended after many years, and on the occasion of its 100th anniversary, spoke about delegating tasks to others and their impact on business success.
Addressing the students, he spoke about the insatiable desire for learning, the sense of wonder and curiosity about how different devices work, and said:
“For someone who is learning and curious, this is the best time because you can always enhance your knowledge with podcasts or [online] lectures.”
One of Gates’s most important pieces of advice to entrepreneurs facing a huge amount of work is to outsource some of the work to others.
Bill Gates considers delegating tasks to others as one of the most important factors in business success
In the early days of Microsoft Gates, he worked in software programming, which he has been interested in since he was 13 years old. He did most of the programming himself and edited other people’s code. He knew full well that with the growth of Microsoft he could no longer do all the programming himself, so he trusted others and allowed his staff to specialize in coding.
Gates did not have much expertise in employee management, so he brought Steve Ballmer to Microsoft, who, in his own words, “loved employees and management.” Ballmer served as CEO of the company from 2000 to 2014.
Gates believes that delegating tasks alone does not lead to success, and having good employees is one of the most important factors in delegating success to others. He says mutual trust is needed for a manager to confidently delegate tasks to his employees and divide tasks between them.
Delegating tasks to employees makes the manager a valuable person and allows him to talk to his employees in the role of a guide and gain their trust. Of course, delegating tasks to others requires patience, but doing it successfully makes employees feel useful and empowered and consider themselves influential in the company’s progress.
Of course, delegating tasks to others is not appropriate for small companies and domineering managers. Such managers check things very carefully and go everywhere and like to have the last word in everything.
In these stressful situations, there is no room left for talking or commenting for a healthier collaboration. In such situations, employees are forced to obey orders, which leads to a loss of morale and ultimately negatively affects the company’s performance.
