Every successful business owner requires a well-appointed toolkit of useful skills. One of those skills is effective delegation. Dustin discovered that the hard way when he arrived at a job site after a lengthy call with his very unhappy client.<\/p>\n
Dustin\u2019s client had requested a new roof with wood-colored, high-end dimensional shingles. The crew had arrived early, while the homeowner was preparing for work. Everything was going according to plan\u2014until the homeowner stepped out of their home and looked up to see how the job was progressing.<\/p>\n
The shingles were a cheap, three-tab model, not the high-end shingle they had requested. Worse, they were green! That\u2019s when the client pulled out their phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI get a wonderful call,\u201d said Dustin\u2014chuckling as he recalled the incident with the benefit of distance\u2014\u201cjust a wonderful call from a client who loves Jesus but, once they realized what was going on, decided to look up four-letter words in the dictionary and share all of them with me at once.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the client, the problem was Dustin\u2019s crew installing the wrong roof. For Dustin, the problem was ineffective delegation.<\/p>\n
Delegation is essential to successfully and sustainably scaling your business. It\u2019s one of the only ways you can both multiply your skillset and expand it without having to develop those skills yourself.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s the catch: When I talk to busy entrepreneurs and executives, the one area they struggle with more consistently than any other is effective delegation. Incredibly successful business leaders run aground here all the time.<\/p>\n
Using Dustin\u2019s story, let\u2019s talk about four struggle points when it comes to delegation. If you\u2019ve ever had difficulty delegating, chances are good at least one of these will apply to you. Then, along with diagnosing the problem, let\u2019s explore solutions so you can turn it around and become a master delegator.<\/p>\n
The first struggle point leaders usually face with delegation is identifying their highest-leverage work. Most of the time, they haven\u2019t done it. And that means they end up holding onto work they shouldn\u2019t. Their to-do lists are full of work that others on their team can do better, work that others enjoy more than they do, and work that others could do less expensively.<\/p>\n
I always go back to this quote from Navigators founder Dawson Trotman: \u201cI purposed never to do anything that others could or would do when there was so much of importance to be done but others could or would not do.\u201d<\/p>\n
When an entrepreneur builds a business from scratch or an executive climbs through the ranks, they do so by learning skills and gaining abilities. But their current role is not the same as their preceding roles.<\/p>\n
Leaders often think\u2014usually unconsciously\u2014that their current role is just all their prior roles combined. But that\u2019s a major mistake. They must now lead people who do those prior tasks, reserving for themselves those tasks that add the greatest value to their company: the stuff of importance that others cannot do. That\u2019s high-leverage work.<\/p>\n
In our business-owner coaching program, BusinessAccelerator\u00ae<\/a>, we teach our clients to identify their highest-leverage work using a tool we call the Freedom Compass. You can also find out more about this tool in my book, Free to Focus<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n The big idea is as simple as this: Given your unique set of skills, insights, and abilities, you should focus your efforts on work you have the greatest passion and proficiency for. We call that the Desire Zone, and it\u2019s exactly opposite to the work you loathe and aren\u2019t much good at\u2014what we call the Drudgery Zone.<\/p>\n Why passion and proficiency? If the work doesn\u2019t energize and excite you, you won\u2019t bring your best. And if you\u2019re not proficient, it won\u2019t add value to your customers\u2014to the marketplace. When you combine these two qualifiers, you get the best criteria for high-leverage work.<\/p>\n To his credit, Dustin was clear on this point. \u201cMy Drudgery Zone activity would have been ordering materials for job sites,\u201d he told me when recounting his client misadventures. \u201cIt was a pain. It was a waste of time for me. And I just hated doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve got tasks like that still on your to-do list, you need to offload them. If it\u2019s not high-leverage, and you can\u2019t eliminate it or automate it, you need to delegate it. The Freedom Compass is the best tool to help identify these sorts of tasks\u2014high leverage and low\u2014but all you need to get started is to ask, Where do my passion and proficiency converge?<\/em> You need to do more of that and less of everything else.<\/p>\n Based on his telling of the events, where Dustin went wrong is everything past this point. See if you can relate.<\/p>\n People make their highest and best contribution when they\u2019re working as close to their Desire Zone as possible. That\u2019s true for leaders\u2014and the people they lead.<\/p>\n That means you should delegate tasks to people who have proficiency and passion for the work, if possible. Of course, it\u2019s not always possible. Sometimes we and our teams have to press on with tasks in which our passion and proficiency are suboptimal. Welcome to life.<\/p>\n But if you want to become a master delegator, you not only have to identify your highest-leverage work, you also have to select the best delegates. And that\u2019s another struggle point for a lot of leaders: They delegate to whoever is available and unreasonably expect results beyond the person\u2019s expertise.<\/p>\n Dustin fell into this trap. Early in his business, he gutted out the materials ordering and similar back-office functions. He hated it and knew he needed to get someone to take it off his plate.<\/p>\n \u201cI finally got to the place where I was ready to hire somebody to delegate really anything to,\u201d he told me. But was it the right person? Was the person chosen because they had passion and proficiency in areas that Dustin didn\u2019t? Not really.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things that I expected and tasked this individual with doing\u2014who, mind you, has zero roofing experience\u2014was to call in our work orders,\u201d Dustin admitted.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re offloading Drudgery Zone activity, you want to find someone who has more passion and proficiency for that activity than you do. Otherwise, you\u2019re just multiplying your own frustration and setting someone else up to fail.<\/p>\n I see this time and again with the business owners I coach. It may not be green shingles instead of brown, three-tab instead of dimensional. But they end up with something they didn\u2019t intend. They realize they need to delegate. They even hire to do so. But they delegate to the wrong person\u2014whether it\u2019s because they\u2019re underqualified or suited for different work entirely.<\/p>\n When delegating, we must ensure we\u2019re delegating to the best people for the work whenever possible.<\/p>\n Even then, we\u2019re not out of the woods. Sometimes I find, when working with clients, that they\u2019ve selected the right person but haven\u2019t properly equipped them. That was also a factor in Dustin\u2019s situation, and it\u2019s also the next sticking point in effective delegation.<\/p>\n Assuming you\u2019ve got the right delegate, you can still go wrong if you don\u2019t equip and empower them to win. By that I mean you\u2019ve got to:<\/p>\n It\u2019s fair saying that Dustin hit this sticking point hard. He recognized that his highest-leverage work didn\u2019t include ordering materials. He saw he needed to hire someone to take that over. He stumbled there. But here is where he really got hung up.<\/p>\n \u201cI trained her up,\u201d he admitted about his hire. \u201cAnd by trained her up, I mean, I told her once \u2018this is what I expect\u2019 and gave her nothing written down.\u201d In other words, Dustin\u2019s delegate was more or less on her own to figure out the job.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, he complicated that as well. \u201cI had enough awareness to say, if I\u2019m going to ask this person who has no roofing experience to order roofing materials, I should probably have a form for that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The problem was, it was a terrible form. As Dustin explained,<\/p>\n It is the most complex order form in the history of the universe. And if the multiverse is real, it includes the multiverse. So imagine infinite universes. If I were to enter this document into the most complex contest, it would win in a landslide. And keep in mind, I\u2019m using this form to delegate to somebody who has no clue what they\u2019re looking at.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s no surprise the client ended up with the wrong materials. Worse, the job site was also missing materials. Dustin knew all sorts of information about the job he never wrote down and didn\u2019t include in his form.<\/p>\n2. Selecting the Best Delegates<\/strong><\/h4>\n
3. Empowering Delegates to Win<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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