Many people love the idea of delegation but have a hard time putting it into practice. As a business owner, I know how hard it can be to let go of control at times. We want things done a certain way and the only way to truly ensure that is to do it yourself. But is that always the best move? Lets first take a look at the definition of delegate…
Entrust (a task or responsibility) to another person, typically one who is less senior than oneself.
I want to talk about the importance of delegation for a moment, specifically related to business owners.
As a business owner, you created a business around something you are passionate about. You probably saw a need and wanted to fill that need in the marketplace. As a business owner, there are countless tasks that need to be handled. Bookkeeping, IT, hiring, marketing, the list goes on. As the owner and the face of the business, we need to clearly define where we are most valuable. Are we most valuable writing up employment agreements or talking to potential clients/customers? Are we more valuable entering data into our accounting software or spending time writing out our 5 year business plan? For those two questions at least, the answers are obvious. However, all of those tasks need to get done.
I think most of us would agree that delegation is a good thing. It frees up our time to focus on the things we want and the things that are most valuable to growing our business. So why do we struggle with it so much? I really think it comes down to control. Like I mentioned before, we have certain ways we want things to be done and by doing it ourselves, we can assure they get done in that fashion. But I want to challenge you for a minute. First, are you absolutely positive that the way you are doing that task is the best and most efficient way? Isn’t there a chance that someone else could come in a do it better? Second, is there a more productive activity that you could be doing instead of taking on that task? For example, is spending 10 hours a week on accounting when you could be out selling a good use of your time? Let me give you an example below with some numbers.
Let’s say it would cost you $500 a week to pay for accounting services. It would save you 10 hours of YOUR time. If you could go out and land a client worth $1,000 per week with that extra time, that was worth it, right? I think many of us get caught up on the cost of things and forget to look at the value of our time and what we can turn that into. Time is the most valuable asset we have and proper delegation can help us buy back some of our time.
To wrap up, delegation can come in all different shapes and sizes. You can delegate to someone already hired on your team, you can hire someone new, you can outsource services to a company, etc. There are many different routes you can take.
I want to leave you with a series of 4 questions to consider…
Are there tasks that you could be delegating?
What is the cost of delegating those tasks?
How much time will you gain from delegating those tasks?
What is the $ value of that extra time you gained?
These are the series of questions we need to be asking ourselves as we continue to grow our businesses.
What tasks are you planning to delegate today?
