Small business owners make high-impact decisions every day but often struggle to delegate the smaller stuff.
A recent survey of more than 250 entrepreneurs with businesses in growth mode found that respondents spend on average 36% of their working week doing administrative tasks such as invoicing, data entry and ordering office supplies. The entrepreneurs surveyed worked an average of 45.5 hours per week, meaning that more than 16 hours are admin-filled.
Many find themselves ordering the tea, coffee and stationery, fixing urgent and unavoidable problems like the plumbing in the staff kitchen and chasing late payers. With only a handful of staff who have been hired to perform specific and skilled roles, the boss will often feel that they can’t ask for this sort of help.
Mean revenue growth for expert delegators was 143%, but for the non-experts it was 80%
In some cases, avoiding the problem-solving, cerebral part of the job is a convenient distraction. But wasting time in this way can take a toll on the early growth of a business.
Expert approach
According to the survey, the entrepreneurs who self-identified as ‘expert delegators’ had healthier revenue growth and were more likely to have seen their profit margins increase in the previous year than their peers. When asked to compare revenue between their last two years of business operations, 82% of ‘expert’ delegators had seen growth compared with just 66% of the rest of the survey participants, who described themselves as ‘non-expert’ delegators.
Mean revenue growth for expert delegators was 143%, but for the non-experts it was 80%. When asked about their profits in the past 12 months of trading, 85% of expert delegators reported an increase, compared with 74% of non-experts.
Every task the CEO performs should be moving the business towards growth
It can be hard to work out what tasks to delegate and how, particularly if the business owner is used to having full oversight and control over their workload. Here are some tips.
Write your own job description
The business leader needs to understand where their time and skills are best directed. Every task the CEO performs should be moving the business towards growth. There just isn’t time for anything else if you hope to have any sort of work-life balance.
Pin this on your desk, and if a task crops up that doesn’t match your job description, either delegate it (if it’s important) or don’t do it (if it’s not important).
Consider freelancers
A full-time office manager needn’t be an early hire. In the early months or years, virtual assistants can pick up the load remotely, periodic repeat deliveries of office supplies can be automated, and software can handle many HR-related tasks.
Build a pool of freelancers you can call on for specialised expertise
Build a skilled pool of freelancers you can call on for specialised expertise – spanning customer service, marketing and social media, employment law and HR – and you’ll quickly get used to delegating.
Trust before it’s earned
Richard Branson’s executive assistant for over 30 years, Penni Pike, says that the entrepreneur’s approach to delegation is to trust people before they’ve earned his trust.
‘From the very first day I worked with him, there was never any doubt as to whether or not I could fulfil my role,’ she says. ‘We’d never worked together before and I had no official training – but he chose to trust me.’
You’ll get more out of people who feel as though you already believe in what they can do.
It’s a natural tendency to default to the tasks we can do on autopilot
Adjust your expectations
If you delegate a task that would have taken you 30 minutes to complete, don’t expect to save 30 minutes.
You might need to assist, especially at first, but you will still have saved some time, so look at the accumulated gains. Even a 20-minute saving on three tasks per day would give you back five hours a week.
Recognise procrastination
It’s a natural tendency to default to the tasks we can do on autopilot to avoid what seems impossible. This might help wired brains switch off but it comes at a cost to business growth.
To truly fight procrastination, you need to set goals. Try assigning two tasks per day. Any unscheduled activity that’s unrelated to your completing these tasks is likely to be procrastination. If you learn to recognise it, you can navigate back to what’s important.
Break tasks down into smaller component parts
If you can’t beat the distractions, try reframing what you’re doing. It might be that the tasks you’ve set yourself are seemingly insurmountable. Break them down into smaller component parts and they’ll instantly be more manageable.
Take it home
Life admin consumes free time, just as work admin erodes business productivity. Consider what you could delegate to help you enjoy your downtime more. Researching and booking holidays, organising parties and weddings, ordering cards and presents, switching insurance and utility providers, and finding and vetting tradespeople could all be outsourced to a virtual assistant.
Know your own limits
Business owners can feel under pressure to know how to do everything, from sales to IT to marketing. But, like everyone else, the set of skills they possess are specialised and valuable.
Unless something is a core skill, now’s not the time to take a course; delegate to a specialist instead. While having oversight is helpful, you don’t need to try to become an expert in everything.
