Question: One of my weaknesses as a PM is not being able to delegate and manage work assigned to others. What are ways you can tackle this? Granted I have high expectations of others, but sometimes they just don't meet the basic requirements.

Example:
I asked someone to do a task for me, and 2 hours before the deadline they present it to me clearly showing no effort was put into it. I had to scramble and re-do it myself. In this scenario, how do you deal with this person? Is there a better way of asking them to do it? How can I enforce it so they do it better next time?

Answer: 
A few suggestions:

Don't delegate & disappear until the deadline. Check in with them once or twice, just informally to ask how it's going, do they need any clarification from you, are they having any problems.

Be sure everyone is clear on what the priority of the delegated task is, especially if the people you've delegated to have other usual tasks, and possibly other people that are setting their priorities or depending on them.

And when things do go wrong, don't think "enforce". Think "ask." Ask them about it (after you've calmed down from having had to scramble to do it yourself, and after putting any thoughts of what *you* think happened firmly out of your mind), in a non-judgmental, non-authoritarian, curious way. 

For example, in the situation you describe, I might say something like:

*So, I appreciate that you turned the thing in on time, and that it had (something else I can remotely find to praise about it), but I was surprised that it didn't include (specific things that you had expected it to include). Was I not clear about that, or ...?* 

Note that I'm leading with the assumption that the fault might have been mine. I will do this even if I am 99.999% sure that it was not, partly because I have learned that communications problems usually have fault on both sides, but mostly because it is the least accusatory framing I can provide, so it is least likely to provoke a defensive, self-justifying response, and most likely to elicit an open, productive response.

Hopefully, the response identifies what the other person thought the problem was, and the conversation can then proceed collaboratively to figure out how we can avoid a similar problem next time. Sometimes I will offer a solution (eg, "would it be helpful if I checked in with you halfway thru?") and sometimes (usually not the first time) I will assert a solution I want to try (eg, "OK, well, next time I would like to see your design/prelim draft so we can make sure we're on the same page earlier").

Communications problems are SO common. It is SO easy to think that everything made it out of your head and into your words when really only half of it did -- and this is true on both sides. It's often helpful to point that out (eg, "Oh I see, I said X and what I meant was X+Z, but I wasn't explicit about the Z part so you assumed I wanted X+Y") as it can become an area for continuously working towards improvement. 

It's hard to move from "I asked you to do this thing and I ended up redoing it myself, dammit" to "OK, well *that* didn't work out how I expected. What do you think happened?" And it can take a few hours or a day or two to get there, especially at first. But I have found it well worth it: both in terms of fostering a collaborative, productive team, and in terms of lowering my stress level. :) 

Good luck!
Work environments changed a lot since the apparition of emails and voice messaging, not so long ago. I remember a time when people had only the choice to answer the phone or not. More recently appeared "gaming" in work places, gaming like in video games, people choosing their avatar and playing it along the days, the weeks and even the months. Now a days, everybody want to manage and managing is seen by many as "making it do by others", blaming others in case of problems. My stereotyped answer is not very far from the truth. People game their job when they don't have the competence to do it: to take the eat and face difficulties. Gaming in work places is a true cancer. If a boss has to delegate to look competent, employees have to blame an other employee to look competent. Happily, is it just a phase we are going through. The law of profit is implacable. No company has the luxury of having gaming employees always focusing on blaming others than to do what they are legally obliged to do. Usually when an employee does not want to do a job he or she is paid for, the employer can fire him or her. Many public companies are stuck with that cancer because the budget comes from a government and seems to be eternal. My solution in my studies and in the work places I was in, was always to do my work alone if it was my responsibility to do so. I prefer to talk to my boss and establish an agreement with him or her on who does the job, when and at what salary. I assured the success of my studies like that in which there was a lot of team works to do. Frank discussions are avoided more and more. Face to face discussions too. When will the bell of profit ring to bring back people in reality? A work place it not a gaming lounge and success is not always blaming others to get the promotion.