Gazette Business

ActionCoach: The Art of Delegation

By Graeme Crosbie

8:20am Thursday 26th August 2010

IT’S that time of year when many entrepreneurs and business owners so look forward to ... three weeks’ holiday in the sun with the family, safe in the knowledge that their business will look after itself while they’re away, looking forward to coming back and finding that sales are up, profits are booming and the bank account robust, healthy and able to cover the cost of all those cocktails and meals out he or she has just enjoyed...

Sadly, if this isn’t you, you’re not alone. It’s characteristic of many small and medium businesses that August is the month where everyone but the business owner gets away on holiday. They daren’t leave the ship for more than a long weekend, and even then they’ll be checking that the campsite has mobile signal and there’s wi-fi close by.

The problem is not, as many business owners believe, that their team isn’t capable of looking after things – it’s simply that they’ve never allowed them to try.

The art of delegation is one which they simply have never learnt, never mind mastered, and yet in many ways it is the key to the freedom many of us dreamed of when we started up our own businesses.

A typical story is one I had with a client business in Glastonbury. The business owner was time-challenged, working longer hours than anyone else in the business, and tied to the business 51 weeks a year because ‘nobody will do it as well as I will’.

There was one task linked to invoicing which he did religiously for 20 – 30 minutes each day. I asked him why he did it, as it seemed like a relatively simple process. “It is,” he replied, “but it’ll take so long to teach someone else to do it properly, it’s quicker to just do it myself.” A very common answer.

“How long would it take you to write down what it is that you do in this task?” I asked.

“About an hour,” came the reply.

“Let’s allow 2, just to get it right. Now how long to sit with a staff member and show them what you’ve written down, check that they’ve understood, and watch them do it according to your instructions?”

“Oh about four hours”, he said. “Let’s allow six,” I suggested. So for the cost of eight hours investment in writing the system and training his team member, he was able to safely delegate his half hour task each day. That’s 2 ½ hours each week, 10 hours a month, 120 hours a year – equivalent to a three-week holiday not just this year, but every year from here on in.

So how many hidden hours are there in your too busy week right now? Simply ask yourself: “What’s the worst that can happen if someone else does this task – and can I live with that?”

And if the answer is Yes, then it’s time to learn the gentle art of delegation...

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