Read Management Time: Who's got the monkey and The Doctrine of Completed Staff Work, which is mentioned in the former. Reading both will take you ten minutes.
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Delegation is deeply intertwined with the activity of succession planning. Unlimately, as a serious business owner who wants to build something sustainable, scalable and which has a value that isn't completely dependent on your personal ability/skills, your ultimate goal should be to be able to delegate everything. This is an incremental process that will happen slowly over many years, it's not just a way to free up your own time, it gets you thinking about the processes of things and helps you gain a more structured, "modular" understanding of your own business functions.
You've asked for a framework so here's roughly what I do:
How valuable is the task to the company? Give it a business value out of 10 maybe. For example, if we were running a website design company, then coding would be a high number. Something like credit control (chasing outstanding invoices) might be slightly lower. This gives you your business value.
How difficult is this task/duty to perform? Again, maybe a score out of 10 would be good. e.g. coding might be a 9 or 10, something in customer service might be a 3, marketing or sales might be a 7 etc.
How much time does this task take a week? Maybe estimate this in hours per week.
How good am I at this task? most people start a company because they are good at something and it is likely you will be good at something which scores highly for 1 unless you, for example, employed a talented web designer off the bat. Appreciate that you are much cheaper than an employee right now and use it to your advantage.
Once you have these metrics it becomes quite easy to do some cost/benefit analysis etc. For example, we need to make sure our accounts are kept up-to-date. Bookkeeping activities would score high for 1 but relatively low for 2 (you can hire a junior bookkeeper initially for a pretty low salary). Furthermore, it takes up enough time (3) that it would warrant a hire in its own right. (If you have other jobs which don't take up very much time, you need to categorize them by the skills required and try to group them into job roles. For example, the credit control could also be done by the bookkeeper in theory.
What you'll be left with after a while will probably be something related to production/delivery that you scored high for 4 and a load of little tasks that are too small to hire for. A lot of people get to this point where they maybe have someone in administration/customer service and someone in marketing/sales but they are still almost solely responsible for delivery of the product or service.
The key to getting this off your plate is to break it down. It's tempting to treat everything you do as one big thing. Let's take a hair salon as an example. You might be extremely skilled at cutting hair and think "there's no way I can afford to hire someone as talented as me" but by breaking what you do down you could for example, delegate the simpler parts (e.g. the customers all get their hair washed before the cut) to a more junior member of staff. It's easy to worry about quality but important to understand that it's far more efficient for you to "QA" several other people who aren't as good as you to get the quality up to the standard you need rather than just do it all yourself.
Ideally, at this point, you will find yourself in what feels like a more managerial role: dealing with issues that come up, making decisions, enforcing processes and deadlines, ensuring quality etc. What you have now is already wayyy more scalable than a business where you're responsible for actually doing the delivery as opposed to just being accountable for it.
It's a lot easier to scale once you reach this point. As I touched on at the beginning, the process of delegation naturally makes succession planning easier as it gets you thinking about processes/skills etc. This means it's easy to replace people and also easy to scale functions up as there are clear requirements for the role.
Finally, once you hire a competent manager to replace this final set of duties you perform you've essentially "won" - you've solved the "founder problem" and you're in a really good place for an exit, whether that's selling the business or just taking a step back even to enjoy the fruits of your labour.
This is a bit of a late night brain dump but I hope it's slightly helpful for you.
EDIT: thanks for the gold, didn't realise this comment would get so much attention, I'd have put a bit more effort in if so :)
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So you should be delegating work you've mastered or that they'd be more effective at doing than you. I only know what you put in here, but if I were you given the above, I'd continue to push work to them until I see one of a few indicators:
The work output is no longer up to my expectations and I can't coach it there
Details are getting dropped
They're expressing overwhelm, exhaustion, frustration, etc. in their 1:1s (you are doing 1:1s weekly, yah?)
Your job is to get results for your company, so at the end of the day anything you delegate has to be done well as it reflects on you. So, be thoughtful about what you delegate and not just about their feeling of being overwhelmed.
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The go-to solution for most starting entrepreneurs is productivity, they just need to get done more things, right? The thing is that we should go after selective efficiency, not mass productivity. Be aware of the productivity trap - when it only makes you work more.
Commit to putting your company's output first & your productivity second!
How do we put our company’s output first? We build a team.
The truth is that most entrepreneurs I talked to are stuck working IN their business instead of working ON their business. Even if they manage to delegate a part of their business, they don’t seem to be able to optimize process flows to truly automate (outputs of one process feeding as inputs into the next) - they remain to be the middleman.
… And the problem is that if they stop working, their business stops as well.
The general rule is that an expensive resource (you!) should not do inexpensive work. That means that you need the time and mental capacity to make decisions that add the most value - decisions only you, as an entrepreneur, can make.
You are the captain, you should steer the ship, so why do you scrub the deck?
Here are the 4 key steps to work ON your business:
Build Process = Create & specify building blocks of your business pipeline
Find Human Talent = Define your team structure and find a person with high potential & relevant abilities
Delegate = Proper onboarding methods, set expectations, and clearly transfer process ownership
Architect: Spend time to envision the possibilities and see the big picture. Loopback to 1
This is Part 1: How to Build a Process. If you guys will be interested I can write down the rest as well. If not, I just wasted 11 hours of my life lol.
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IntroductionEvery business is different!... Is it?
Your business is a pipeline - with eyeballs on one end and money on the other.
In general, Business is a repeatable process that:
Value Creation = Creates and delivers something of value...
Marketing = That other people want or need...
Sales = At a price they are willing to pay...
Value Delivery = In a way that satisfies needs and expectations...
Finance = That the business brings in enough profit to make it worthwhile to continue operation.
What is a process?
“a series of steps taken in order to achieve a particular end”
A well-defined process should have predictable results. Imagine a production line in McDonald's - each and every step is specified in detail to produce the same output. If followed correctly, the result will be the same every single time - no matter who follows the process.
Key components of a well-defined process
Objective = What are we trying to achieve? What is the problem we are solving?
Inputs = What are the inputs we need to perform the steps?
Steps = What are the routines we need to follow?
Outputs = What do we want to create?
Desired Outcome = What is the result?
Going back to our McDonald’s example:
Inputs = (List of ingredients), (+ usually time, effort, money, …)
Steps = Recipe to prepare the meal
Output = Big Mac
Desired outcome = Tasty Big Mac burger as advertised, ready in 2 minutes
If our business is a repeatable process, then every part of the business should be a repeatable process as well - in order to create our “pipeline”.
Product development? Process. Supply? Process. Marketing? Process. Sales? Process. Once each part of our business is transformed into a process with predictable results, we have a business we can scale since we are able to easily identify bottlenecks.
Why is it important?
I know that this may sound relevant only to people who run a large business, but that is far from the truth. A well-defined process is beneficial even to solo entrepreneurs. Working solo requires you to wear many hats and the best way to keep your focus is to have processes & routines in place.
A well-defined process with detailed SOPs also allows you to hire less experienced labor, therefore saving on Overhead… but more on that later.
If you do not have a process in place, it is not only complicated to hire someone and actually transfer the ownership to them, it is also nearly impossible to:
Analyze their performance
Optimize (more on that later)
Replace them if they are not performing/decide to leave
Imagine a scenario - you finally find someone to manage your supply chain, you train them for 4 months so you can finally focus on your priorities. They decide to leave for some reason and you have to repeat the whole process all over again - wasting a year of your effort.
What if you had a process in place - with instructional videos, checklists, KPIs, and workflows. Replacing them would be a matter of a month.
Where to begin?
The most important component of the process is the objective. People tend to overlook this and then wonder why their business pipeline leaks (flow of outputs from one process is not suitable as inputs for the next process).
To define an objective, you need to think deeply about the thing you are trying to achieve. It may be tempting to say that your objective is to get the outputs, but that does not have to be the case!
Here is a brief example:
Let’s say you have gained some weight and don’t like the way you look… and you do not feel particularly good either.
You decide to go on a strict diet and after 3 months your weight is almost back to normal, but you feel weak and your skin is pale. You don’t like the way you look… and you do not feel particularly good either.
This is obviously an extreme example but hopefully explains my point. Was the objective to lose weight or feel and look healthier? Maybe monitoring your weight isn’t the best outcome to optimize for. If you would spend more time thinking about the objective, you would realize that the steps to achieve the Desired Outcome were something completely different.
This applies to your business as well.
What is the objective of your customer service? Minimize refund rate? Or use every chance you have to show your customers that you care deeply about their experience with your products?
How to develop MVP?
When developing a new process, you need to start with a draft - a minimum viable process.
Every process can (and will) get quite complicated, it is not possible to develop a perfect process from scratch so please, save yourself some time and don’t even try it. I know, it can be tempting once you get into it, to try and develop the greatest workflow the world has ever seen, but you will regret it the first time you will try to actually follow it.
Agile Process Development
Define the objective first = do this properly
Map out key steps and milestones = even though you do not have the process yet, you should have a rough idea of what needs to be done
Do the actual work while recording your screen + add steps and inputs you missed with your initial draft
Be aware of your assumptions = don’t expect everyone to be as experienced as you, they may need that one step you have not added because it was “obvious” to you. The same goes for inputs (other documents, source of data, etc.) - you know your business and inputs better than anybody.
Identify and fill in the gaps as you go = it may take you twice as long to do the work while developing the process at the same time, but you will save a LOT of time in the future
Once we finish the work, go back to your objective and evaluate whether you achieved it!
BONUS TIP: There already may be a process for the thing you want to do - Search online! You are not the only one with Supply Chain / Sales funnel / Customer service / etc. Save yourself some time - adjusting and optimizing an existing process is always easier than developing a new one from scratch
Integrate with your Project Management software
ClickUp, Asana, … It does not really matter but make sure to create a template with all the details included
Visualize your process
Use flowchart software to visualize the process. You do not have to include all of the steps, just the key inputs, milestones, decision points and outcomes (I personally use Miro: https://www.miro.com/ but there are dozens of similar websites for free)
It is extremely helpful to refer to the process flow during the onboarding phase
And think about this: If one process feeds to another as it should, you can then visualize your whole business in ONE flowchart, including all the flows, inputs and outputs and everything in between. Now imagine showing that to your investors - they would be able to look “under the hood” and see the magnificent machine you have built
You are building an asset - keep that in mind.
… And now we are getting to the good stuff: Process Optimization
How do I optimize my business?
In general, we can say that the objective of the optimization is to get more output with less input. Or the same output with less input. Or more output with the same input.
Quick example:
You improve our sales call script. The call takes the same time on average, you still need one salesman to perform the call, but you achieve a higher conversion rate = more sales. You now have more Output with the same Input.
Avoid the temptation to get fancy! Keep things simple, it is never going to be perfect. The key to successful optimization is your ability to identify bottlenecks. That is the part of your Business Pipeline that produces Output at a lower rate than the rest requires.
We are going to implement Iteration Cycles with a proper Feedback Loop in order to optimize quickly and efficiently.
Iteration Cycle
Take a look at our process as a whole (ideally the visual flowchart)
What could we improve? What are our options?
Based on our experience with the business, we make an educated guess
Define the change
Implement the change
Measure & evaluate - keep it or drop it, Repeat
Feedback Loop
Once we delegate the process to an employee, we want to make sure that the Feedback Loop is closed, which means that ideally, THEY will be able to tell us what could be improved, what is working, and what is not, showing us the data. Especially as your business grows, you won’t be on top of every single process, but your employees should be. Once again, they need to know the Objective and Desired Outcome in order to know what to optimize for.
With time, your iteration cycles should get faster and more accurate. Efficient tweaking will show you the power of aggregation of marginal gains.
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Well, and that is pretty much the end of the first part. As I said in the introduction, there is a lot more to that, but this would be the first step.
As you can probably tell, I am quite passionate about this topic and I truly find it to be the most valuable lesson I have learned in the past… well, ever.
I would be happy to discuss your experience with Team Management & Delegation, so please let me know your thoughts, you can send me a DM or leave a comment below.
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I hope that you found it useful and that once you start implementing it, you will find yourself having more clarity to make the right strategic decisions in your business and more time to pursue things that matters.
I am excited to hear from you so let me know your thoughts, thanks!
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