“Nobody Can Do This But Me! I have to do it myself!” is something that we’ve all heard at some point in our business or personal lives. It may have even been said by you. We often feel that we’re the only ones that can do something and we do it best. This is probably the hardest area for business owners to get their heads around when they are starting to set themselves up to scale, adding people to the business removing all the reliance on themselves. You cannot scale a business on one person, for the most part. You need to be able to delegate to others whether its employees, contractors, or outsource workers. Unfortunately, many business owners are standing in their own way; they can’t see the forest for the trees. They don’t realize that they are the ones holding themselves back by not delegating.
Look at your value, what’s your hourly rate, $100, $500, or more?
If you’re wearing all the hats you are not getting the value of your hourly rate. You may have an employee, intern, or outsource worker handle tasks at a fraction of the cost. Business owners don’t often look at it this way, they only think about the fact that it’s going to take them longer to show someone else how to do the task, they may as well do it themselves. Owners must get around this mindset to succeed.
There are many entrepreneurs who started with nothing and worked their way to being successful like Oprah Winfrey, Howard Schultz, and of course Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, to name a few. Of course they started off on their own, but there was a time when they had to add others to the team to succeed. In these cases, we know how that turned out.
In early 2020 with the pandemic starting many business owners found themselves with the weight of the world on their shoulders, having to do everything themselves because staff couldn’t come in. Many soon realized that the knowledge of the business was in the head of the team member doing the job and nobody else knew exactly what they did. This highlights two challenges that entrepreneurs face, the first wearing all the hats doing everything themselves. If something happens to them the business stops. You don’t even have to be in a pandemic to see evidence of this. The second challenge is their key worker knows how to do their job but if the process is only in their heads others don’t have access to it and you’re in a whole pile of trouble if the employee is not available. This speaks to setting up your business with the end in mind, documenting processes and systems that others can follow when given the information. McDonald’s has approximately 200,000 staff worldwide, many of whom are teenagers, who follow processes and procedures every day. It’s about having the right information at their fingertips to follow a process to get your product or service from creation to client successfully.
I’m in the process of preparing to work with an Intern next month. Admittedly, it’s a challenge to hand tasks off to someone, especially when you are not familiar with their skill level. However, there are steps that you can follow to assist with your success;
- Make a list of activities or tasks you do regularly
- Prioritize what is to be done first, order of importance, or other criteria
- Look at what you must do, meaning absolutely no one else could learn to do it. Be honest with yourself!
- Outline the steps needed to do the other tasks
- Indicate the frequency for the task to be executed
- Determine a benchmark for the time to complete the task
- Determine a benchmark for the acceptable quality of the work
- Evaluate viable options to delegate each task e.g staff, contractors, intern, strategic, partner etc.
- Assign the task as applicable, start with a trial task first
- Assign additional tasks as skill and time permit removing them from your plate
- Understand there may be a margin of error initially. Remember you didn’t start perfectly either.
Using McDonald’s fries as an example they start with taking them out of the freezer and removing them from the plastic bag, walk through the steps of heating the oil, cooking time, adding salt etc. until they hand them to the customer at the counter.
I’ve never worked at McDonald’s but I’m confident each step would be documented. They are leaving nothing to chance or interpretation, and neither should you.
It will be challenging to give up the reins at first. Over time you will see the reward and they may even find a better way to do something. The more you delegate the better you will become at giving instructions and outlining the process. This process becomes your “System” for the task. Tasks may include giving a presentation, handling sales, or setting up social media. Whatever the task is has its own process and therefore its own system. Once you set up these systems, you should be able to hand over the information to delegates, following your instructions, they can get the job done.
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Here is some additional guidance so you can set up systems.
