Do it yourself? Or delegate?

Effective delegation is essential for your business to grow.

Be aware of what your time is worth, and ask: ‘Is this what I should be working on?’ If not, delegate.

By Bonnie Kreitler

As small businesses grow, the available time of their owners or key managers eventually becomes a limiting factor. Making a commitment to let go of certain tasks or projects, pass them on to others, and free up some of their own scarce time for crucial business matters becomes essential. But, experts agree, delegating can be one of the hardest things for a business owner to do.

No matter how smart an entrepreneur is, says Ken Branco, president of R.E.V.V. International in Stafford Springs, when everything must go through them, they eventually become a bottleneck that chokes business growth.

"When a business owner thinks he or she is the only person who can do anything, you wind up with decision paralysis," says human-resources consultant and career coach Rose Mihaly, of Mihaly Associates in Bristol. The result is a demoralized, underutilized staff and a business that’s stuck at its present level of growth.

Breaking the cycle

Branco observes that owner-run businesses generally do well until they reach about $1 million in revenue. Then they stall as their hands-on owners become obstacles to decision making. "To break the cycle," says Branco, the owner has to think about "where they are versus where they want to be." He calls this "gap analysis."

Mihaly says owners should prioritize their activities based on their areas of expertise, asking "Is this what I should be working on?" She encourages them to keep two separate time logs — one showing what they intended to do each day and another showing what they actually did each day. "Usually there’s a big deficit."

Look at the things you planned to do and at what activities displaced them, she continues. Ask if those are things you really need to be doing. Are they things that make the best use of your particular expertise? Are they things someone else could do?

Business owners and managers should stay aware of what their time is worth, says human-resources consultant and trainer Mary Jo Leahy, of Leahy Resources in Tolland. Sometimes owners want to roll up their sleeves and pitch in to prove to employees that they’re willing to take on any job. But it doesn’t make sense for an owner whose time is worth $100 an hour to stuff envelopes or put together binders when those jobs could be done by a lower-paid assistant or a temp.

Once a business owner admits there is a gap between what he or she can do and the skills and time needed to grow the business, willingness to delegate usually follows rapidly. The question then becomes one of whether others already within the organization should take over some of the boss’s functions or whether they should be outsourced to a third party.

Inside or out?

"Delegating involves three things: accountability, responsibility and authority," says Mihaly. All three must be delegated jointly, whether that delegation occurs within the organization or to someone outside of it. "Many owners can delegate the first two but not the third, and that creates problems."

That explains why outsourcing efforts are often more successful than internal delegation, she notes. The outside firm or consultant is viewed as an expert, so the owner’s expectations that they will be accountable and responsible enables him or her to let go of authority more easily.

Delegating to an outside provider works best for very skill-specific tasks that are needed on a periodic basis, says Branco. The goal is to gain time. Passing functions like payroll, credit collection, printing or public relations on to experts rather than trying to handle them in-house can really free up a business owner’s time.

Delegating internally works best for functions that call for flexibility and quick responses on a daily basis. The goal here is to help the boss with decision making.

When internal delegation efforts fail, says Leahy, it’s often because entrepreneurs cannot believe that anyone else can do something as competently as they can. They are unable to accept that even if the job is not done as well as they themselves might have done it, the work may still be perfectly acceptable.

Other entrepreneurs are unwilling to invest the necessary time to hand the job off properly the first time, Leahy continues. They take the attitude that in the time it would take to tell someone how to do something, they could do it themselves. That view is shortsighted, she says, because it ignores the fact that their initial time investment will save them hours on a regular basis once they hand that job off.

Delegation as development

Leahy feels many companies incorrectly approach internal delegation as a time issue. They send employees to time-management seminars in the mistaken belief that better prioritizing skills are the solution. They fail to understand that delegation doesn’t work unless there is a competent staff to accept delegated tasks.

Mihaly agrees. "Delegating is not just about taking something from my in box and putting it in yours," she says. She advises approaching delegation by deciding who within the organization has the necessary skills or what training they may need to get those skills, what information they will need, and what time the owner must invest to hand a project off.

Good delegators delegate projects, not tasks, Mihaly says, and they use delegation to develop their employees. When delegation is a tool for facilitating an employee’s growth while the boss gains time to devote to his or her core competencies, delegation becomes a win-win situation.

"Think of internal delegation as building the next set of leaders," Blanco says. "You, the leader, must always prepare yourself for the next level," he says, "and prepare those around you to fill the gap when you leave."

That makes internal delegation a human-resources tool for retaining and rewarding the best people.

"People want to contribute, to be challenged, to give opinions," says Mihaly. "Without delegation, an organization cannot grow."

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