Josh Anstey’s Blog

Entrepreneurs love to get their hands on anything and everything when starting businesses. There comes a stage in this process, when entrepreneurs must learn to delegate. There is often a lot of resistance to this, with entrepreneurs finding it hard to let go of their ‘baby’.

Resistance often includes, ‘I don’t trust anyone else to do it’, ‘I can do it better than anyone else’, ‘I am the only person who has the vision to complete this task’, ‘I don’t know what to delegate’, ‘I can do it quicker’, ‘It’s too expensive to hire someone else’. This is hard for entrepreneurs, but is extremely necessary when businesses start to grow.

Delegation is the handing over of authority and tasks to someone else, and believe it or not, can be quite a simple and trouble free process if done correctly.

Here are a few pointers in how to delegate.

Decide what to delegate
Firstly, you need to decide what you need to and can do, and what you need to and can delegate. I call these your ‘need to list’ and your ‘can do list’. I use the words need and can here carefully. Make a list of everything that needs to be done. Next, work out what are your strengths and weaknesses. Then work out what you specifically need to do, which is your ‘need to list’. This list may include areas that are currently confidential, or focus on the broader strategy and growth of the business. Your ‘can do list’, are things that you don’t necessarily need to do, but you have time to do and are interested in being actively involved in them. Don’t use this list as an excuse not to delegate. This should be a very short list of two or three items or activities.

Work out what you need to delegate. These are things that need to be done, but don’t have to be done by you. They can be more day-to-day operations that can be overseen by someone you hire. Other things that you can delegate, may not be vital to the overall day-to-day operations of the business, but are activities which can be done by someone else over a period of time.

Delegation roadmap
Create a roadmap or plan once you have decided what you are going to delegate. This includes detailed descriptions and roles for each activity or task that you are going to delegate. The aim of this is so that the person you delegate to, will have a good understanding of what their role is, what needs to be done, and what needs to be achieved by this. While you are obviously going to be able to explain it at the beginning, make sure this roadmap and plan is detailed enough, so that you are not being called every five minutes to confirm something.

Hiring the best people
The next step is hiring the best people for you to delegate to. Make sure these people are able to share your vision, excitement and insight that you as an entrepreneur feel. It is also important that they are suited to the job tasks that you are going to delegate to them; Administrative? Marketing? Operations management? Accounts and finance? Development? Make sure the person satisfies all your requirements and you do thorough background checks before employing them. Hire someone that will complement your skills, and will make up for the areas that you feel are weaker. This is a great stepping stone to a strong business relationship and future success.

Accountability & Responsibility
In your roadmap for delegation, set out goals for the tasks and activities. Make sure the person you delegate to understand the outcomes required from their responsibility and that they are accountable to the success of these tasks. This added pressure and accountability will increase the likelihood of a good job being done. These expectations need to be clearly communicated so that there is no confusion.

Check up & Provide Feedback
Randomly check up on how everything is going. This does not have to be hourly, or even daily. Checking up to make sure the tasks are under control will make the person you delegate to feel the need to succeed in his tasks, and will settle your entrepreneurial resistance to delegation if you had any. These can be randomly dropping past their office, or scheduling meetings to review the work up to a certain point. It is also important to constantly provide feedback, so that they know how they are going with everything. This will also give you an opportunity to give your opinion and thoughts on the progress.

Reward
While not necessary, rewarding employees for good work after delegating to them, can be really great for their self-esteem, moral and motivation. This can range from a voucher, bottle of wine, or parking space, to a bonus, salary raise, or additional time off.

Remember, you are delegating so that you can focus on the overall greater strategy and development of your business. Always keep that in mind.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 6:18 am and is filed under Business, Entrepreneur, Start-ups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.