My business currently has eight key members in it, including myself. Two of them has been assigned functions and decision making power. They can run their own show and get a piece of the action as an incentive to perform. Two of them have clear roles, work independently, and require very little supervision. The last three require day to day monitoring – to date I have only given them tasks instead of functions and I am personally responsible for managing them.
That’s about to change with two of them this week.
I believe that the first thing that holds entrepreneurs back is the inability to delegate anything and bring people on. You can always do a better job yourself and you don’t want to spend the money to bring on help. Your time is spent on the high value and low value work and you’re a one person show. You can only grow so much because you will always be limited by your time.
Some entrepreneurs break free and bring on help. Even if it’s only a few hours per week or you bring on an unpaid intern, you start taking the steps to remove some of the roles from your plate so you can focus on the high value work. These entrepreneurs typically assign tasks and the employees come every day asking for what the next project to work on will be. The second thing that holds business owners back therefore is the inability to delegate functions.
When you can delegate functions you are ready for real growth. This means giving the people who work for you the ability to make decisions and act on their own without calling you for an answer. Provide them with the tools and the opportunities so you can focus on the continued growth of your business. As you hand off functions you can focus on the big picture of where you want to take your business.
Over the past few weeks I have found myself being caught up in day to day activities managing the three people I have in task based roles. I got caught up in the typical entrepreneur’s dilemma where I knew I could do a better job and did not trust them with guiding an entire project on their own as they have very little business experience. The two positions are also very important functions in my business and could mean the difference between my success and failure.
One of them is advertising and the other is managing the over 1,500 authors who write for my site. If the person I put on advertising causes problems then I won’t be making much money from my site and if the person managing my authors makes mistakes I could find myself without content to promote. This line of thinking has always led me to do it myself and will continue to hold me back until I can delegate those functions out. So that’s what happening this week.
The two people I have in the office will each be given a new portfolio and will be trained on what to do. I will be able to monitor them and answer any questions that come up on the spot. If it turns out that the position is above their capabilities, I have at least begun the process of taking that work off of my plate and the role will be set up for someone else.
My most valuable time as a business owner comes from setting the strategic direction of the company, meeting with new potential partners, discussing our business with the media, and motivating and training my staff. It will be a big step to offload these responsibilities and some mistakes will be made, but the business will, in the long term, be better for it.
If you are just starting a new business, are a solo entrepreneur, have brought on a few staff, or are quickly expanding your business there are always things that you should not be doing and should delegate out to someone else.
What are you going to stop doing today and delegate to someone else?
Evan Carmichael
I agree with your post above, you need to delegate functions to your employees and stop giving them tasks. You can’t work efficiently if you are constantly looking over the shoulders of your employees.
However, not all employees are able to handle this responsibility. In an ideal world, you would be able to delegate everything to your best and brightest people, but some people work better being managed. That’s why I think it is critical for small start-ups to hire people who are just as entrepreneurial as they are. You need your employees to have the entrepreneurial spirit and know right off the bat that they are going to need to succeed independently.
As your company grows and you need to hire more people, you will realize not enough of these entrepreneurial type employees exist with the skills you need and you will need to hire good talent that needs to be managed. At that point though, you can have a management structure in place, so that as the leader of the company, you aren’t wasting your time managing subordinates.
Delegation is something that can be very challenging for people starting their own businesses – especially when they get accustomed to doing everything themselves because they start with a one-man operation – even when the time is right to be able to afford to hire other people to fulfill different functions. I offer advice to many entrepreneurs in the small business computer consulting arena, and that is always a big question on their minds – “When can I hire additional staff?” Frequently, on the flip side, I find that these people sometimes tend to hire additional help too soon, not factoring in the actual costs of subcontractors or full-time employees and driving their businesses into the ground. I think the real challenge is definitely knowing when you are ready to get the help and then being able to actually rely on the people you hire. The key is usually establishing a very clear business plan and writing it down on paper from Day 1 and revisiting it regularly, revising when necessary but really sticking to it and following it through in steps.