Business Enhancement Associates Aha! Moments: Do Less, Achieve More: The Beauty Of Effective Delegation

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BY DAVE LAVINSKY | DECEMBER 3, 2012

Are you swamped at work? Here's how to delegate effectively and increase your productivity.

As company owner, you need to focus only on the items that add the most value to your organization. In general, these are the things that you, and only you, are capable of doing. You should delegate the rest.

Pareto principle (Photo credit: BEUTELTIERE)

Of course, you need a way to determine what the key things are on which you should be spending your time. Consider the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, ... In the case of your focus, the Pareto Principle says that 20 percent of your efforts yield 80 percent of the results you achieve. Therefore, the key is to identify what this 20 percent of your work is and do more of it (and delegate the 80 percent).

Identifying Your Top 20 Percent

Pareto Principle Option 2 (Photo credit: Sleepy Valley)

The first way to determine which 20 percent of work you do yields 80 percent of the results is to think back. What were the most important projects you completed last year that propelled your company forward? Your answers will include the types of projects that belong in your top 20 percent and which you should continue to do.

The second way to determine your top tasks to perform is to review your to-do list and consider the following questions when reviewing each item:

Does that activity really add value to your company?
Are you really great at performing that task?
Is there somebody else who can do better, as well as, or nearly as well as you at completing the task?

Time Management (Photo credit: Intersection Consulting)

Finally, a great way to determine which tasks are not in your top 20 percent is to keep a running list of low-value tasks. ... For example, you can’t do work yourself that you could hire someone to do for $10 an hour. As you go through your days, write down all tasks you perform that fall into this category.

The next step in the process is to delegate the lowest value uses to others.

Five Steps to Effectively Delegate

It is often hard at first for some entrepreneurs and business owners to delegate because they want to control everything themselves. However, to achieve your end vision, you must delegate. ...

The fact is this: Delegating tasks to others can save you a great deal of time and allow you to focus that time on the highest value-added tasks. However, when done incorrectly, delegating results in things not getting done or getting done poorly, which is when you end up expending more time and energy than you have.

This is why it’s critical to delegate properly. Using the following steps will help you do so.

1. Identify the Right Person for Delegation

...The right person is the one who has the requisite skill set to do the task and the ability to complete the project within the appropriate timeline.

Your employees should maintain daily and weekly to-do lists. This way, you can review those lists to identify which employees have the ability to tackle the project to be delegated.

2. Clearly Define the Project

The next step is clearly to define the task, the deliverables, the completion date, and why the project needs to be done. ...

3. Discuss the Plan of Action or How the Task Can Be Accomplished

Next, you need to discuss the plan of action: Specifically, how the person charged with completing the task can accomplish it.

Of key importance here is that you don’t want to delegate a task (e.g., fax this report today), but rather a process (e.g., fax all the reports I have for now on). Therefore, even when delegating a seemingly simple task such as sending faxes, you need to discuss the plan. For example, how often do you need reports faxed? How quickly must they be faxed once you create them? What must be done after sending the fax? (Confirm receipt? Shred document?) ...

4. Have Them Repeat Back the Plan

Next, have the person to whom you delegate repeat the task and deliverables back to you to ensure their complete comprehension. ... Have the person repeat all of your directions back to you until the directions are right.

5. Monitor Progress and Provide Feedback (Longer-Term Tasks)

When you delegate a task that will take more than one or two days, you need to monitor its progress and provide feedback. Ideally, you identified project milestones or checkpoints to ensure the project stays on track when initially discussing the plan.

To ensure projects are completed properly, mark those milestones on your calendar and monitor that results are delivered on time. If they are not, be sure to immediately alert the worker that he or she has fallen behind. Meet with the worker periodically to provide feedback and guidance.

6. Evaluate Performance

The final step to effective delegation is to evaluate performance. ... Here’s why: If somebody does a B1 job the first time they perform a task that you delegate, ... the next time they will do a B1 or lower job because they think that their B1 job is good enough. This is why providing feedback and evaluating performance allows you to get the best results from those to whom you delegate.

English: Pareto / 1/2 Edgeworth-Box (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Even if they did a great job, you need to explain why they did a great job so that they know how to repeat this performance in the future. You need to explain if there was room for improvement. People generally appreciate slightly negative feedback versus no feedback at all. ...

Finally, you need to understand and accept that it will often take at least twice as long to delegate a repeating task the first time as it would to do it yourself. However, once you delegate something successfully, it will be off your plate forever.

You must also accept that many delegated tasks may not get done as well as if you did them yourself. Although this isn’t acceptable for some areas of your business (e.g., providing a service to a customer), for others (e.g., reordering supplies, completing paperwork), good enough is good enough.

Effective delegation makes you replaceable, ... this is what you want. It allows you to spend time growing--rather than simply maintaining--your business. You can spend less time working and take real vacations. It also makes your business attractive to buyers, which is particularly important if your end vision is to sell your company.

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Excerpted with permission of the publisher, Wiley, from Start at the End: How Companies Can Grow Bigger and Faster by Reversing Their Business Plan by David Lavinsky. Copyright 2012 by David Lavinsky. This book is available at all bookstores and online booksellers.

Author Dave Lavinsky is the cofounder of Growthink, a consultancy that helps entrepreneurs and business owners identify and pursue new opportunities, develop new business plans, raise capital, and build growth strategies.