Perhaps the most common advice I give to business owners is to delegate more. This is because the ultimate scare resource is the business owner/operator’s time. By delegation, we hope to accomplish more by working through others. One can achieve managerial leverage much as we achieve financial leverage.
Delegating is difficult. One must let go of the task and entrust it to another. Communication is key, as it is in virtually all human interactions. The delegator must make the task clear, which might also include the means to achieve the task, the expected outcome and the timeframe. The person being delegated to might need to be trained before being given the task.
A good delegator can have six to twelve direct reports, all working in parallel at the direction of the delegator. A bad delegator does everything themselves. That’s pretty limiting. A bad delegator will typically say, “Others don’t do it as well as I do.” That’s true, but maybe you can train them to do it almost as well as you do. And sometimes they surprise you and do it better.
Another thing I have noticed is that a lot of people, me included, don’t like to be told what to do. We respond better if we are asked to do something. In a work environment, having the boss ask you to do something really means they are telling you what to do but the words matter. The perception is better and typically received more favorably. Ask my wife.
I often talk to business owners who don’t want to hire employees. Or they don’t want to hire more because they think dealing with human resources issues are the worst part of business. This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry says, “People—they’re the worst.” You can Google it.
If you’re going to grow your business, you likely will have to do it by hiring employees and coming to the realization that people are what you do. The owner/operator may think they’re in some other business, but their stock-in-trade is people.
I used to get frustrated because I couldn’t get any work done; my employees kept bothering me. Then someone gave me the best piece of business advice I’ve ever received: “Everything you achieve you will achieve through others.” I quit seeing my employees as bothering me and started seeing them as my means to achieve things. It made all the difference.
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