Delegation, time-span control, and systems thinking for manufacturing leadership success

Poor delegation and reactive leadership trap plant managers in daily crises; leaders must build systems, empower supervisors, and focus on strategic targets.

I spent 32 years working for an aluminum company. Over that time, I had the opportunity to lead and participate in multiple culture-change efforts inside maintenance and operations organizations. Some worked. Some failed. And the difference was rarely technical knowledge, budget, or even talent. It was my leadership behavior.

Recently, I began mentoring a leader I’ll call James (not his real name). James is a plant manager, but this story applies equally to maintenance managers, reliability leaders, and anyone responsible for getting results through others. If his experience sounds familiar, that’s because it’s painfully common and completely fixable.

Last week, James and I had a candid conversation. Every day starts with good intentions. Every day ends the same way. From the start of the shift until about 4:00 p.m., James is consumed by emergencies, equipment failures, staffing gaps, expediting parts, approving decisions, settling disputes, endless meetings, and answering questions. He is the hub of the wheel. Every problem eventually finds its way to James.

Around 4:00 p.m., things finally slow down. That’s when he turns to emails, paperwork, reports, and corporate initiatives. By 6:00 p.m., after a 12-hour day, he’s exhausted, and nothing has improved. “I’m working 12-hour days and many Saturdays,” he told me. “I’m just keeping my head above water.”

He sees the gaps. He knows where waste exists. He understands what needs to change. But he never gets the time or energy to work on the business; only in it. Then came the frustration. “If I don’t drive change, no one will,” he said. “Everyone comes to me for the solution and every decision. I’m overwhelmed and losing ground.”

Shortly before our conversation, James had purchased my book, Zero to Hero: How to Jumpstart Your Reliability Journey Given Today’s Business Challenges. Something in it clicked. He sent me an email because, for the first time, he recognized that his exhaustion wasn’t caused by laziness, incompetence, or a lack of effort. It was caused by leadership structure.

Does this sound like your job? Your plant? If so, let me be direct: if nothing changes, James will fail; not because he doesn’t care, but because he’s leading in a way that guarantees failure. Here are the reasons why:

1. You will fail if you cannot delegate.

Delegation is not optional. It is not a “nice to have” leadership skill. It is fundamental.

When all decisions and problem-solving flow through one person, that person becomes the constraint. The organization slows down, people disengage, and improvement stops. Long hours and personal heroics feel noble, but they are signs of a broken system not strong leadership.

Many leaders confuse delegation with abdication. They fear that letting go means losing control. In reality, the opposite is true. You still own the outcome. What changes is how results are achieved: through others instead of through yourself. If you must personally solve every problem, you are not leading. You are firefighting.

2. Work in the correct time span of control.

One of the most damaging leadership mistakes I see is working in the wrong time horizon.

A plant manager’s role should look roughly like this:

• 80% strategic work, focused on targets at least six months out
• 20% auditing and coaching, supporting the here-and-now through five months.

Supervisors, on the other hand, should be spending:

• 80% of their time in today, this week, and this month
• 20% looking ahead one to five months.

When leaders operate in the wrong time span, with plant managers stuck in daily emergencies and supervisors waiting for direction, no one is working on the future. The organization becomes reactive by design. Ask yourself, “How are you better on Friday than on Monday?”

James wasn’t failing because he lacked urgency. He was failing because he was doing his supervisors’ work for them.

Releasing responsibility is hard, and letting go is uncomfortable. Especially for leaders who were promoted because they were the best problem-solvers. But leadership is not about solving problems yourself. It’s about building capability in others. You still own results. You still set expectations. You still audit performance. But execution must happen at the lowest possible level in the organization. If everything depends on you, improvement stops when you are absent and exhausted.

3. Leaders build systems; they don’t personally solve problems.

This is where real change begins. Your job is not to fix recurring problems. Your job is to put systems in place that prevent them. One simple, powerful approach is process management.

Start by identifying the top 10 areas of failure, waste, or opportunity in your plant. Assign one owner to each area. Their responsibility is not firefighting; it’s monitoring the input variables that drive results.

This typically requires one to four hours per week and must include shop-floor observation time. You cannot manage what you don’t see and understand. Provide standard training, a clear method, and a help chain. At my plants, we called these individuals process managers as part of our quality system.

Each process was color-coded: green, yellow, or red to indicate control status. A simple scorecard allowed leadership to instantly see where help was needed and where systems were stable. This is delegation with structure.

A second system I suggest is yesterday–today–tomorrow meetings. Accountability requires visibility. Each morning, plant leaders gather around a whiteboard. Critical KPIs from yesterday are reviewed and color-coded as follows:

• green: met standard
• red: missed standard.

Only reds are discussed. Next, leaders predict today’s performance with color-coding:

• red: will miss the standard and need help
• yellow: challenges exist but we will meet the standard without help
• green: confident the standard will be met.

The same exercise is repeated for tomorrow.

This simple process drives anticipation, countermeasures, and accountability. Excuses disappear because problems are surfaced early at the lowest possible level. And again, it is delegation.

What you can begin on Monday

• Understand and correct your time span of control.  
• Delegate responsibility while retaining accountability.
• Put systems in place to solve problems instead of solving them yourself, such as:
  • process management
  • yesterday–today–tomorrow meetings.

Failure to delegate and implement systems will cause any leader to fail both personally and organizationally. A leader’s job is to move the organization from its current state to a target state. Hard work and long hours don’t matter. Results matter.

Results come from systems, clarity, and leadership in action.