Category: Blog

When you’re an entrepreneur, your business is like your baby. Delegating or outsourcing tasks can sometimes be difficult because no one can do things as well as you. Right?

Wrong, says Jordan Cohen, a productivity expert at PA Consulting Group, a London-based management consulting firm: “At some point, every entrepreneur will hit a point where they can’t do any more and do it well,” he says.

In a study for Harvard Business Review, Cohen and Julian Birkinshaw, a professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at London Business School, interviewed executives at 39 companies in the United States and Europe and found that 41precent of their day was filled with activities that could be competently handled by others.

“We’ve been socialized with the idea that completing a task is an accomplishment,” says Cohen. “But in today’s business world, an entrepreneur’s time can be better served by doing the tasks that matter most to the success of their business and delegating the rest.”

Finding the right people and trusting them with your brand can feel risky. Cohen offers these three easy steps to become a better delegator:

1. Put outsourcing infrastructure in place before it’s needed. 
Entrepreneurs often look for help when they’re time crunched or overwhelmed, but this is not the best time to find an outsourcing option, says Cohen. Instead of making decisions under stress, research good alternatives for delegating or outsourcing before you need them. For example, train staff members to take over new tasks, or find and interview consultants that you can call upon when needed.

“The more time you are able to invest in setting up your options, the more robust the solution will be,” says Cohen.

2. Put delegating on your calendar. 
When you review your calendar and to do list, Cohen says to look at meetings and tasks with a critical eye.

“What tasks do you have to do yourself and what could you have others do?” asks Cohen. Tasks that have low value for your customers and are time-consuming — such as bookkeeping or administrative tasks — are ideal tasks to outsource.

“You are in the best position to determine what you have to do,” says Cohen. “Use good judgment, but don’t get caught up in a way of working that isn’t productive.”

3.Then test the waters. 
Once you identify tasks that are good for outsourcing, start small. Cohen suggests starting with something that isn’t complex or urgent. Instead, experiment with low importance things. For example, hire a graphic design firm to turn your presentation into a PowerPoint presentation — but don’t start with your most important sales pitch.

“Things rarely work perfectly the first time,” he says. “The idea is to get comfortable with delegating. It takes practice, but it gets easier over time.”

Source: Enterpreneur.com ~ By: Victor Cheng ~ Image: pixabay.com

When you build and lead a business, you’ll be wearing many hats. You’ll have to play the role of a salesperson, an innovator, a financial manager and leader while you still have to deal with routine micro-tasks throughout the day. It can be fun at first, but eventually, this will start eating away at you. You’ll start working long hours, nights and weekends, and you’ll never seem to make a dent in the ever-growing pile of tasks to accomplish.

When you get to this point (or ideally, before you get there), you need to think about delegating some of your work. Delegation is a key factor in entrepreneurial success, on both a personal and professional level, so be sure to follow these seven rules to do so effectively:

1. Force yourself to delegate.

Most entrepreneurs have a natural sense of ownership in their work. They want to do anything and everything they can, and they want to do as much of the work themselves as possible. For the most part, this is an admirable trait, and one that lends itself to better overall startup performance. However, eventually you’ll have to force yourself to delegate some work away—even if you don’t want to. Even if it’s a task you actively want to be doing, it may be better for you to delegate it away.

2. Be proactive.

The second rule is to be proactive in your delegation. If you wait until you’re overwhelmed and on the verge of burning out, delegating a few tasks may end up stressing you out—and it may be too little, too late. Instead, you need to recognize when your work is piling up too high, as early as possible, and take measures to address it before it becomes too much. That might include hiring someone new, organizing your tasks into lists, or helping someone develop new skills to take on a section of your work.

3. Know your team’s strengths and weaknesses.

Before you start assigning tasks, you need to be aware of your team’s strengths and weaknesses. Each individual is going to bring something different to the table, so if you want to make the most of your delegation process, you need to cater to those individual quirks. For example, one of your workers may be slow and methodical, while another is a little sloppy, but very fast. To the former, you can delegate important, yet non-urgent tasks, and to the latter, you can delegate tasks you need done right away.

4. Invest time in teaching.

When you’re delegating, it’s easy to say to yourself, “I have to do this, because I’m the only one that knows how.” Undoubtedly, there are tasks on your list that only you know how to do, but that doesn’t mean you can’t teach someone else how to do it. You may not like this idea, since it will take more time to teach someone than it would to just do the task yourself, but think of that training as an investment. You only have to teach someone once, and at that point, they can take on that task indefinitely.

5. Make your expectations clear.

When delegating, be as specific as possible about your expectations. Let your teammate know exactly how you expect the task to be completed, and when you expect it to be done by. If there are multiple teammates working on a project, establish clear responsibilities, or at least designate one person on the team to serve as the champion for the project. Take a moment to address any questions or points of confusion early on to prevent problems down the line.

6. Trust, but verify.

Obviously, you trust your workers to do the best job they can; otherwise you wouldn’t have hired them. Once you assign a task and establish a deadline, it’s fair for you to trust that they’re going to get the job done. However, it’s also a good idea to verify that the process is underway. Establish open lines of communication so you and your teammates can update each other on progress, just to ensure that the deadline is going to be met, and that there aren’t any further points of confusion.

7. Give and receive feedback.

Finally, take a moment to give and receive feedback once the delegated task is complete. Let your employees know if they’ve handled it improperly in any way (so they know for next time), and ask what they thought of your assignment and instructions. You’ll learn much about the delegation process this way, through experience, and you’ll be able to carry these takeaways through to the next time you need to delegate something.

These rules are about making sure your delegated tasks get done effectively, but even more than that, they’re about maintaining a healthy workload (and your sanity) as an entrepreneur. You need to learn to delegate effectively—it isn’t optional. Otherwise, you’ll end up spreading yourself too thin, your tasks won’t be completed satisfactorily, and you’ll end up burning yourself out in the process.

Source: Entrepreneur.com ~ By: Anna Johansson ~ Image: pixabay.com

And for those who don’t make the shift at an early stage, it gets more and more difficult as the company grows in size. Here are seven leadership skills every entrepreneur needs to learn.

How to build a support network

Good leaders surround themselves with advisers who can provide mentorship, counsel or simply a sounding board to run ideas past. Such relationships can be formal – a business coach, say – or structural – chief executives often get great benefit from working with the right non-executive chairman. They may be external – the right professional advisers will provide crucial perspective – or come from within the company – as part of a broad management team, for example. Be open to a broad range of ideas and to be able to take the best of the advice offered in order to synthesise it into action.

How to recruit and retain talent

Good leaders invest time in staff. Business leaders commonly credit their employees as their companies’ greatest asset, but too few follow through on that. They don’t always get involved in recruitment, for example, and they don’t build structures that will keep staff motivated, enable them to develop their skills, and ultimately encourage them not to look for new opportunities elsewhere. Employment engagement isn’t something fluffy – it’s the key to attracting and keeping the best people.

How to delegate

Good leaders empower their staff. Leaders who learn to delegate have more time to concentrate on leadership – rather than spending every moment managing day-to-day issues, they have space to stand back from their businesses and to plan for the future.

How to relinquish control

Good leaders deliberately hire talented people and then give them the freedom to deliver on those talents: they recognize there’s no point in delegating to employees if you don’t then trust them to get on with the task in hand. It can be difficult for entrepreneurs who have often built up businesses single-handedly, undertaking every task themselves, to learn to let go. But micro-managing staff is counter-productive: it wastes the leader’s time and demotivates employees who don’t feel that you have faith in them.

Source: forbes.com ~ By: David Prosser ~ Image: pixabay.com