Get More Done, Delegate

Many people go by the saying ‘if you want something doing, do it yourself’. It’s a decent statement in all fairness but if you’re the owner of a business, you don’t want your work ethos to revolve around such a saying.

Delegation is the assignment of authority and responsibility to another person usually from a superior to a subordinate. If done correctly, it can free up time for the superior to focus on more important tasks whilst knowing the less important yet still necessary tasks are being taken care of.

Effective delegation can be split up into a couple of steps and yields great results when practised well. Firstly, you need to decide who is appropriate to delegate to, if you have a span of control, it’ll be your direct subordinate(s). You should give them as much information as possible about the task, the deadline, what resources are available, any additional expectations etc. Secondly, arrange a mid-point meeting to check on progress, this allows you to ensure everything is on schedule and allows your subordinate(s) to raise any issues prior to the deadline.

The important thing to remember is don’t leave anything for assumption or misconception, be clear in every instruction and encourage questioning if your delegates are confused. In practising this simple method, you’ll give yourself more time to plan on moving your business forward as opposed to working on the production development, for example.

Thanks to Llenrock Group for the image.