I do most of my entrepreneur coaching by phone and often I never meet my clients. When they're located in the New York metro area though, I like to get together at least once to put a face to a name. Yesterday I had the pleasure of doing that with one of my terrific clients who heads up a fast-growing consulting firm with a staff of about eight people. As we were talking she was interrupted when her assistant buzzed her on the phone. The office copier rep wanted to talk to her. She declined the call and we resume talking. Our conversation went something like this:
ME: Why was the office copier guy calling you?
HER:We need a better machine with more capacity.
ME: Who's the heaviest user of the machine in the office?
HER: My assistant, Sheila.
ME: Why isn't Sheila responsible for working with the copier rep on finding the right machine?
(Long pause)
HER: I guess it's question of trust. Sheila's great within her skill set, but I'm not sure she can do some things outside of it.
ME: Well, let's assume she can, under your guidance, get all the information needed to make a decision, and then together you and she decide what to do? Wouldn't that be a better use of your time? And wouldn't Sheila feel more empowered with some extra responsibility?
And that's the course of action my client decided to pursue. We spent about 15 minutes of our hour talking about the copier machine, which may seem silly. But it turned out to be a metaphor for where the business tends to get stuck. The CEO of a really fast-growing eight-person company just cannot evaluate copiers. Or peel stamps for correspondence. Or make lunch reservations. Or file documents. Every action that is not moving the business forward strategically is wasted motion and is the enemy!
One of my favorite extreme examples of delegation was my old boss, the president of a $500 million publishing company. He delegated everything. He didn't even read or respond to his own email. He had a special assistant who would print out a stack of emails, get on a plane with him, read him the emails, and he would tell her how to respond. I always chuckled at his extreme-delegation techniques, but he was smart. Any activity that wasn't about increasing the value of the company was forbidden work for him. And so it should be for any entrepreneur, even if your company's sales are $5 million or $500,000.
You are so right! It is so important to empower the people who work for you to do their jobs. You should trust yourself that you are not hiring idiots, and that they can make decisions regarding what they know best. Hearing this really frustrates me.
From my experience, it all comes down to what you like to do the most and learning the delegate the rest.
Something that held me back for a bit was doing everything (although I’m glad I had to do it).
I realized I was best suited and most happy creating videos, interacting with entrepreneurs, speaking and writing.
Everything else is delegated for the most part.
The key is finding those few things you love to do. No matter how silly. If you love email, then by all means create a system so you are on email all the time. If you love taking out the trash, create your business around that.
Just my .02 or .03 cents.
Humm, Id say I brought a company from nothing to a $50M valuation. So guess I can comment here?
I consider myself a failed entrepreneur. I thought it would be nice to share my experiences and tips on a variety of issues and topics I went through, as an entrepreneur. I am listing them down on my blogspot: http://failedentrepreneur.blogspot.com/
No Ads, just pure and simple – my learnings as an entrepreneur. Look forward to your comments, and hope it helps some of you.
On your blog you say “I don’t think there is any such thing as success.” Really? Or are you just saying that. You also say you are a “failed” entrepreneur but you don’t say you are a failure. Is there a difference for you? Finally, I scanned some of your posts and they are interesting, but would be even more so if you identified yourself. It’s hard to take your writing seriously when it’s anonymous, and I encourage you to “come out” because I think you have something to say.