John D. Cook has a post on one of my favorite management topics, when to delegate.

My thoughts on delegation are probably fairly radical. The first principle is that if a project strikes me as interesting to work on, I must delegate it immediately. Managers almost never have the bandwidth to tackle interesting technical problems, it’s the nature of the beast. When I delegate projects, I can remain engaged to a degree that allows me to learn and to hopefully add some value, without stalling progress because I’m too busy dealing with the other million distractions that are part of manager life. I tend to stick with working on the tasks that are too boring or repetitive to bother delegating to other people – they’re generally about the right size to get out of the way when I’m between other things.

The second principle is, delegate everything, especially if you’re in a new role. When you take on a new role, there is no way to estimate how much work is going to be coming your way, or to list what all the demands on your time will be. All of the stuff you were doing is either going to keep you from succeeding in your new role, or just isn’t going to get done, unless you can delegate it to someone else. Of course, in reality you’ll never be able to delegate everything, but proceeding as though you can will hopefully keep you mindful of the fact that you should always be looking for opportunities to delegate.

The point I’m really getting at is that most people are far too reluctant to delegate, and far too selfish when it comes to delegating. Usually when you’re in a position to delegate, you are also at least partially responsible for the professional well-being of the people you’re delegating things to. The things you delegate should hurt a little to give away.