Earlier this week I was speaking with a friend who owns her own business and is very active in the community. During the conversation we got on the topic of being so busy because it is very difficult to surrender tasks to someone else. That seems to be a general theme for entrepreneurs or smaller business owners; I’m not sure if it is a control issue or a matter of ego. Allow me to demonstrate the difference between the two: it is a control issue when you don’t want to surrender the task because you want to be sure it gets done on time or in a certain way; it is a matter of ego when you truly believe that no one can do it as well as you.
I probably don’t need to tell you about the risks associated with not letting go so to summarize: stress and its’ related health issues, being unable to grow your business because you don’t have the infrastructure to handle it, personal conflict, etc. There are ways to overcome both contol and ego based challenges. Don’t panic, I won’t ask you to delegate everything to someone else all at once or to trash everything and start building processes from scratch. Here are some basic ideas to help you let go:
1. Look at how you spend your day. Do you spend most of your time caught up in repetitive administrative tasks? Or, do you spend your day focusing on the big stuff and let the details pile up to the point where you don’t know how to start getting a grip on them? Are there any tasks that are so basic that you could do them blindfolded – if you only had the time? Do you believe you must do them because no one else will do it right?
2. Make a list of the repetitive and administrative tasks that take up most of your time. How many of them directly affect your bottom line, such as invoicing and collections. If you were to document a process, could someone else do it? If yes, delegate it; if no, keep it. Be honest with yourself! Is it possible that this task could be done differently, have a slightly different outcome and still be okay? Ask yourself - How hard would I kick myself if I found someone else who would have more time for this task to actually get it done and maybe even do it better?
3. Can anything be discarded without affecting your bottom line or regulatory requirements? If any of the tasks you’ve listed in steps 1 and 2 do not directly affect your bottom line…do you need them? I like to use the analogy of my wedding cake to illustrate this point. When we were making all the arrangements for our wedding, we got completely stuck on the cake: it was taking up way more of our time and energy than we wanted it to, but everyone gets one, never mind that guests rarely remember anything about it. We took a good hard look at the actual value of the cake to the overall quality of the day. It didn’t add up so we elimintated it. At the end of the day no one even noticed that we didn’t have the whole cake-cutting spectacle. Is the task that seems so critical because it is habit really so valuable? If not, break the mold – ditch it!
Be honest with yourself. If you were to spend a bit of time to give someone good direction and support to learn any task, isn’t it worth the investment to free up your time and energy? Just because you are the only one who can do something now, that doesn’t mean you will always need to be the only one.
If you don’t have staff that you can delegate things to, look at the possibility of hiring a Virtual Assistant or more than one depending on their specialties. For example: hire one VA to do a few administrative duties and another VA to help you with scheduling and preparing for recurring events.
If you need more help with this exercise please contact me through my website, I’d be happy to give you a few more tools and a little coaching.
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