As a business owner, one of your top priorities is growth. You want to continue building your business into something that's stable and profitable. However, as you grow, you quickly realize that you can't do it all yourself and you need to start delegating tasks to other people in order to continue scaling your business.
Delegation is the act of assigning tasks or responsibilities to others. Managing the performance of others can be tricky, it's important to find the right people for delegation and make sure they understand what their responsibilities are. If you are looking for ways to delegate while growing your company, read on because we've got a few tips covered in this blog post.
Delegate, don't abdicate:
When you're trying to grow your business, the temptation is sometimes there to just completely offload all of your responsibilities to a capable member of your team. Delegating work and then completely abdicating your role is not a productive way forward, especially if you are still running things on a shoestring budget. Rather than wearing more hats than necessary or no hats at all, it's time to use delegation effectively as a weapon in your arsenal.
There are two types of delegation: Decentralized (where employees make their own decisions) and Centralized (where managers make the decisions). Decentralization is usually more suited for small businesses where everyone knows what they're doing; at bigger companies there is usually a System/ Project Owner who's responsible for the system.
To get started with delegation, try writing down all the tasks you currently do on your own. Next to each task, note whether it's something you should be doing yourself or if it could be done just as efficiently by someone else. If it looks like something that does not require your expertise, then consider delegating that responsibility to another team member. Once you have finished making your list, start tackling some of those items yourself before assigning them to others, remember not to hand everything off without taking time to train people first. Lastly, remember that the buck stops with you, the overall responsibility on all projects is yours, so be sure to sign off on the final product of your most important projects before they go out.
Delegating and micromanagement:
This is one of the most common delegation issues that business owners face, they're perfectly happy to delegate a task to a member of their team but then micromanage them as they go about completing the job. They are afraid that their direct reports won't handle tasks correctly, so they take back the responsibility and do it themselves instead.
When delegating work to people outside your team, try being as specific as possible with what you want done without going overboard. For example, if you need help with social media marketing, give guidelines for posting content rather than a detailed training session on how to log into each platform. As the visionary for the business, your time is invaluable and micromanaging people you have already paid to do a job, is neither efficient time or fund management.
Delegating according to staffing bandwidth:
When you are trying to grow your business, it may seem tempting to just delegate more work to your team without adding on extra people for the increased workload, this is a bad idea. You'll be more efficient if you have the right number of people, with the right skillset to get the job done properly. To avoid even bigger issues down the line, try not push too much responsibility onto individuals who are not yet ready or able to handle it.
Delegating too much to one team member:
It is important to make sure, that you do not place all of your eggs in one basket when delegating work. You want to ensure that if the worst were to happen or someone left the business unexpectedly, your company would still be able to function effectively . Try spreading out the workload and pairing people in teams to work on a project. This way you reduce the risk of being left in a bind if a member of the team falls ill or resigns.
In conclusion, delegation is a very important skill for entrepreneurs and small business owners to have. Once you learn how to delegate effectively, your company will be able to grow without needing to much additional work from you. The last thing you want, is to burnout as a result of taking on too much, tto fast. Try using this article as a starting point for delegating more effectively, so the right people can do what they are good at while you focus on growing your business.
Коментарі