The Top 1% is understands that a business cannot outgrow its pace of decision making.
If every decision in your business - from the visuals in the marketing ads to the verbs in your hiring ads - has to go through you, at some point:
You become the biggest bottleneck in your own business growth.
Let that sink in.
That's why the most successful business owners love to delegate.
Delegating means getting the important tasks in the right hands on your team and getting out of their way. It means trusting other people to make some of the business decisions.
It doesn’t mean giving a seat at the table for high risk decision making. We aren’t talking about giving the marketing guru the authority to choose the location of your company HQ, or letting the video editing rockstar decide whether the company expands into Brazil.
What it does mean is giving the marketing guru the authority to decide on lower risk decisions in the marketing realm that could have higher reward, like say testing new messaging and creatives across new platforms. And reward her performance with progressively greater authority to make higher risk decisions in her area of strength.
Delegating the right way can take our business to a whole new level. Here are some of the benefits:
1. The Tasks Go To The Right Person
Let's face it. There are people who can do many of the tasks that you're doing better than you. And we want to get those tasks into their hands as quickly as possible.
Then we can move the person who had those responsibilities into a role that they are best capable of. And if you are that person, it means you now have more time to focus on being the leader of the company. More to come on that.
When we delegate our tasks to the people who can do it better, we're setting our company in a better position to grow.
2. You Cultivate A Strong Team Culture
When each team member’s role aligns to her strengths, and everyone understands how they fit into the entire mission, and you are giving them the space to be creative and deliver, your team is set up to win.
3. You Can Be The Leader Your Business Needs
I get it. You were the builder since the beginning.
You look around your business and you see your fingerprints everywhere.
That website? You built it.
That email campaign? You wrote it.
That coffee? You made it.
That's great! Your business survived to this point because of you. And now it needs a leader. And the more you delegate, the better you can focus on guiding your business through the long game.
That means protecting the team from external forces, communicating the vision to the team every day, and making sure that the team understands how it fits into the giant picture.
It means navigating through the strategic problems that matter most, while trusting the team to handle the tactical fires that are important.
4. You're Setting Up The Business To Run Itself
You can start moving away from the daily decision making, confident that the business can manage the daily fires, emerge stronger, and thrive without you.
Remember, you're building this business to give you the freedom to live the life that you've always dreamed of. By delegating it, you're able to remove yourself slowly but surely to the other parts of your life that matter.
Delegating is an important part of growing a business that can thrive without you. When we trust our team to rise to the challenge and then out of their way, they have the space to be creative and do what they do best.
It also builds team cohesion. When a team faces the daily challenges, and they overcome them together, they build a strong team culture. An organization with a strong culture improves everything - from customer experience all the way to the bottom line.
Imagine how it improves your life…
No more feeling like you’ve got too much on your plate…
No more feeling like a slave to your own business…
Less anxiety about losing clients…
And about 95% fewer business headaches…
Imagine how delegating could transform your business…
It sounds like a no-brainer, right?
Right now, you're probably thinking, how do I start delegating in my business? Well, let me give you four practical steps that you can start taking today:
Step 1: Identify What Areas Of The Business Are Delegable
Let’s start with an 80/20 analysis. Write down all the tasks you perform each week.
After you finish the list, identify the 20% of those tasks that are responsible for 80% of the value that we provide for our customer and that advances the business mission.
The 80% that only provide 20% of the value, we need to de-prioritize them, and if possible, eliminate them all together. You’re going to be focusing on the 20% that give us the most value.
Now, once you’ve finished getting that 20% figured out, look for all the tasks that are repetitive and don't require a human interaction.
For example, sending daily emails, scheduling, or paying your bills.
If you’re still manually doing those tasks, then it’s time to start automating them. And there are many services that can help you do that.
So let's remove them from our list of potential areas to delegate and put them in another list to automate.
Now look at what remains and highlight two or three of those tasks that you enjoy doing, and that you're strong at.
Keep ego out of this step. You shouldn’t be highlighting everything on the list. There are some things you are strong at, and some things you aren’t. Being self aware at this step makes all the next steps much simpler.
Now, what remains are delegable tasks. That brings us to step number two:
Step 2: Delegate
Try to make it so that over time, we commit to delegating one of these tasks, and get one of those things off of our plate. If we can get one or two things off in the first week, let's do that, then move two to the next week. If it takes longer; one every week, then let's do that.
The point is, we want to start moving tasks off of our plate, and we want to give them to people who are stronger than we are in those areas, that can do a better job.
So go over your list and choose one or two tasks you can start delegating this week, and then a couple the next week, until the list only has the ones you had highlighted.
Step 3: Get Out Of The Way
Each time we hand over a task, we want to give clear expectations about what we're looking for and the goals we want them to achieve.
Then, we need to let them do their job. Trust them to deliver what you hired them for.
Trust yourself that you hired the right person.
Remember, they’ll be new to the team, so by giving them clear goals, we want to show them how they fit in the bigger picture and how they fit in providing value to the company. That's part of your job of being a leader.
So by giving them the space to go out there, make the mistakes, learn, try new things, test, we're setting them up to be an integral part of the team.
Step 4: Be Patient
“It’s going to take too long to explain, so I just did it myself”.
I hear that a lot in failing businesses or large bureaucracies.
This is short shortsighted thinking. It may get stuff done faster, but over the long term this lack of patience will backfire. In other words, you win the battle, but you lose the war.
It’s important to let go of control and let that person do what you hired them for.
This is not going to happen overnight. Bringing on someone new often requires training. Sometimes you have to explain things over and over. An extra 15 minutes clarifying today saves countless hours of frustration next week.
While we're doing that, it's time for us also to realize how our lives change, as we start giving away those tasks, and how we can then funnel our newfound time and newfound energy into becoming the leader for the company, and to then turn at the same time and start enjoying the life that we love.
Trust is an essential part of team, and your team is the best predictor of success for your business.
Delegating is a powerful strategy that helps get the right tasks to the right people. It involves more people in the decision making, increasing team buy in, and expanding the realm of what’s possible in your business.
Focus on these four steps today and watch how this transforms the way you do business.
And how it changes your life.
Imagine that instead of sleepless nights, 18-hour work days, and waking up every morning anxious about all those endless fires...
You wake up every morning, enjoy your cup of coffee and your morning routine...hanging out with your loved ones...confident that your business is thriving without you.
And your biggest question on your mind is: how am I going to enjoy the day?
It’s a win-win.
But it’s not an easy process. If at any point, you want 1-on-1 guidance on how to delegate, create and hire a team, or how to set your business up for epic growth, click here and reach out to our team.