Could You Delegate More?
Many business owners and people in senior management positions find that they are too busy working in the day to day of their business or trying to do everything themselves to set aside regular time to step back and focus on their business strategy and leading the business. Letting go is very hard to do but if you try to do everything yourself you are likely to feel overwhelmed, find yourself working longer and longer hours and that you are limiting the potential growth of your business.
Delegation involves giving someone else the responsibility and authority to do something you normally do and holding them accountable for doing it. So what are you doing that you could delegate to someone else in your company or if you work on your own that you could outsource? Here are some examples of areas you may be able to delegate for you to consider:
Things you are doing that are not in your area of expertise. What tasks are you doing that are not in your area of expertise? This could be accounting, sales and marketing, IT support and many other areas. If you are doing things that you are not an expert at you are probably finding them challenging and also that you are taking a long time to complete them. Review where you are spending your time and consider delegating or outsourcing those things that are not within your area of expertise.
Routine and administrative tasks. What tasks are you doing that are basic, routine or administrative? This could be a whole range of things such as phone answering, taking minutes in meetings, answering emails, filing or data entry. These type of tasks are likely to very time consuming for you but very easy to delegate or outsource to others. Identify the basic, routine and administrative tasks you are doing and consider who else could do them.
Areas that fit within someone else's job description. Are you doing work that fits into someone else's job description? This may be because you don't trust them to do the work, you may feel they are not capable of doing the work or you may be just doing the work because you have always done it up to now. Consider areas that you are doing that are actually someone else's job and take the time to properly delegate the tasks to them.
Authority and decision making. Are you taking all the decisions on everything in your business or your area of control? If every decision has to be taken by you, you are likely to be a major bottleneck in the company. Consider delegating some of the decision making to others within the business, maybe by developing an authority grid that involves only major decisions coming to you.
Things you are doing that are not essential for the business. What are you spending your time doing that is not essential to the business? Maybe you are completing a process that is no longer required or maybe you are analysing data that can be analysed by a system. Think about how you spend your day and cut out everything that is non essential.
Tasks you are doing because you like doing them. What things are you doing because you like doing them? You may be running the daily workload meeting that your Operations Manager could run because you enjoy seeing all the staff at the start of the day or you may be having lunch with your favourite customers because you were originally their key contact. Review what you are doing because you like doing it and consider delegating to other people within your team or company.
So thinking through the above, could you delegate or outsource more?
You can also read other business and stress management tips articles that may help you be more effective at work or in your business.
Author: Liz Makin
Published: July 2015
Makin It Happen has a range of personal development online courses to purchase, created by Liz Makin, including anxiety management, communication, resilience, soft skills, stress management, time management and coaching. Liz Makin also provides personalised business coaching, business mentoring and stress management services to business owners, directors, managers and professionals.
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