When running a business – or any other type of endeavor that requires time, investment, and planning – knowing when to have others complete certain tasks is vital knowledge. For small businesses, this is not always obvious.
Budget constraints on such businesses create a strong imperative for the business owners to do as much as they can themselves. Sometimes this is simply necessary – delegation can be a luxury some small business owners cannot afford.
However, there are some forms of delegation that a business needs to be able to afford – usually those tasks which require an expertise which the owner doesn’t have – whereas others are best delegated once it becomes possible.
For small businesses and creative endeavors, beginning to delegate is a clearly accepted sign of growth. Delegation is therefore not only a way to have certain tasks completed to a better standard, but also to promote growth and improve a business’s reputation.
And a further reason why delegation is wise is that it takes the stress off the manager. This isn’t only personally desirable; it also makes a good deal of business sense. It stands to reason, for example, that a business owner only completing the tasks that are well within their expertise and comfortably scheduled is a business leader who will perform much better than an over-encumbered one. So much is obvious, but it’s probably the main reason delegation is important.
Defining Roles
To work out when to delegate a task, you need to first identify that task, what it requires, how much time it will take, and who would be best suited to complete it. This is the value of clearly defining the roles that need to be carried out. You will not know which tasks to actually delegate until you do this.
Furthermore, this is especially true if you are currently in a situation of handling as much as possible yourself. It is quite easy to lose track of your responsibilities, and even if you successfully manage to pull this off, there’s no telling how well you are performing each of these tasks. Delegation is not simply giving someone else a task; it’s giving a task to somebody who can do it better than you.
So, a real analysis of the tasks you currently have on your plate – with reference to which professionals specialize in those tasks and how expensive it would be to hire them – is the first thing to do. The when of delegation cannot really be sorted out until you have established the how, the who, and the why.
Planning Properly
So, you are aware which tasks could be delegated and what improvements in task performance could be realized. Now it is time to plan for that.
The first step is to budget for delegation, not only to see if you can afford it, but when you might be able to afford it. You plan for a certain amount of business growth before a certain task is delegated.
Bear in mind though, that delegation could become more urgent if the task is not currently being performed to an acceptable standard. In such cases, the urgency of delegation might increase, and you might move forward that proposed date in your planner.
Next Level Daily, a company producing luxury notebooks and full focus planners for business and personal life, say that planning on this particular level of complexity often requires the use of more complex planners, with more capacity for visually representing all these factors.
Put most basically, you should definitely aim for delegation eventually, but the urgency of this is dependent on several factors. You should consider each of them.