In continuation of my post last week, Delegate, Delegate, Delegate!, I wanted to discuss how we’ve successfully used delegation here at my office.
Delegation has become increasingly important for my business. As we take on more projects and continue to grow the company, I am frequently becoming the bottleneck. Decisions don’t happen without me and people can’t move forward because they don’t have the training or responsibilities to do so.
Here is what I have done to try and lighten the load. So far it has worked well and has freed up my time to focus on the bigger projects!
1) Give up some control – I liked having everything come through me. I could ensure that the right decisions were being made and provide my input. Unfortunately this can only work for so long. If I have a busy week of meetings or media interviews I’m not here to support my staff and give them feedback. With two of the people who work for me I have now given them significant control over what they do. They can make decisions without me and have the power to implement it themselves on our website. I had to train them to make sure they understand how to use our system properly and they are now ready to go.
At some point you have to have the confidence that you have the right people on board and give them the ability to run with their ideas. So far they have both made great strides and have done so much more than when they had to pass everything by me. They are happier, I’m happier, and we’re getting more work done.
2) Give them an incentive – The two people I gave significant responsibilities to also share in the profits that are made from their work. They do not have an equity stake in my business but they do have a profit share for their divisions. Because my business is online, it’s easy to measure the revenue that is generated section by section.
I give them updates every day on how much traffic they are generating and monthly reports on how much money we made. They know that the more they work, the more money they will make. It has helped get them up and running as well as drive more profitability for my business as a whole.
3) Stretch their responsibilities – I have mentioned a few times about the importance of bringing on student interns as a way to cheaply expand your business. We currently have high school interns working alongside our staff. They are online savvy, energetic, and don’t cost us a dime!
I have assigned two of the interns to one of my staff members. He has been responsible for training them and is their manager while they are here. It has been a great experience for him because he has never had this kind of responsibility before. It’s a cheap way to upgrade the skills of the people who work for you and stretch their capabilities. So far it has worked out very well – his team is getting more done and I have two less people to manage than I did before!
Any entrepreneur who wants to avoid buying herself a job needs to look at delegation. Even if it’s outsourcing a small task that lets you focus on building your business in a more strategic fashion, until you start delegating responsibilities you will not enjoy the freedom that can come with being a business owner.
Evan Carmichael
Matthew Toren is an Award Winning Author, Serial Entrepreneur, and Investor. He Co-Founded YoungEntrepreneur.com along with his brother Adam. Matthew is co-author of the newly released book:Small Business, Big Vision: “Lessons on How to Dominate Your Market from Self-Made Entrepreneurs Who Did it Right” and also co-author of Kidpreneurs.
[...] I’ve discussed delegation in depth recently. If you want your business to run without you, it will need someone to operate it in your place. Most entrepreneurs have a hard time giving up responsibilities and fall into the habit of doing everything themselves. Begin delegating early by identifying the simple tasks that can easily be outsourced. As you gain more confidence in your staff, assign more important functions. Eventually you want to be able to turn over the entire day-to-day operations so you need to start small and start soon! [...]
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