595: How do you delegate the impossible?

Every time we dive into our delegation roadmap with a heroic business owner, we get a bit of pushback when we tell them they only get 3-4 items that are off limits as far as delegation goes. So how do you delegate the impossible? Well, let’s dive on in… Happy Monday friends, Thomas Joyner with BoP here. It never fails, the excuses go on and on and on! That’s impossible to delegate. You don’t understand! I can’t let go of that, I can’t train someone to do all of that! We’ve heard it all. And yet think for a moment, about some of the biggest businesses you know of. The big boys. Did they start out as multi-billion dollar businesses? Heck no! Most of them were mom and pop 1 location businesses that figured out the magic to scaling their business, delegation, and training. That’s it! They created and implemented new job roles and equipped their team to do the jobs they were asking them to do. So, if you were to write down all the things you do on a weekly basis. What’s that one thing that came up in your  mind that you would love to delegate, but you’re thinking…”There’s just no way!” Just last week, examples from our clients… one business owner letting go of estimating, for the first time in 6 years of running the business. Another, letting go of the entire back end and hiring a virtual bookkeeper and CPA for the first time. Life changing! Still, another, offloaded a huge piece of their operations and scheduling to another team member for the first time in almost 5 years.  Time after time, day after day, business owners are doing the unthinkable and offloading serious weight in their business and making time for what only they can do in the business. So how are they doing it? Well, we call it the systems mindset. The next time you do an undelegatable task, record the process. Newsflash, this will take time. Record it with a screen capture technology or grab an admin, your spouse, a kid, whoever, and dictate to them as you do every single step. And I mean every single step. As if you were going to grab John Smith off the side of the road and hand this over to him.  From there, communicate to an employee that they are going to begin to own this task. All of it, by whatever date you decide. Now, this may mean they have to delegate something from their task list. No problem, the same steps apply. After you’ve communicated this, schedule a time to train them on the process. Walk them through every detail and figure out where they may lack clarity or may struggle. Then push them to have a first attempt. Do it alongside them and help them through it. After you do a couple attempts, it’s time for them to try it on their own. Resist the urge to jump in and save it. Let them struggle through it. Just like in exercising or lifting weights, if someone helps you lift the bar, you never get stronger. It’s the exact same with job roles. The struggle helps in the long run. Set up a series of follow-up meetings to check-in and answer any more questions and support them after the initial training meeting. This may be the most important step. They should own 80% of it at this point and just lean on you for the nuanced points. Lastly, let them own it and then hold them accountable to the standard. Periodically check on progress and continue to support them, but don’t micromanage. Expect them to own it and expect them to be proactive in accomplishing whatever it is.  This is another level of business owner. One who realizes what only their role needs to be and spends hours preparing and delegating the seemingly undelegatable, to free you up for what only they can do.  So, go back to that one thing you hesitated on. Start putting a process together…make it bulletproof. Train, hold accountable and offload it so you business can keep moving forward.  Don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be or drink the excuse Kool-aid! Imagine if Wal-Mart or Amazon or apple just one day, years ago just decided things couldn’t be delegated… they wouldn’t be who they are today. Take the time and believe it can be done. Thanks for listening today… go ahead and send us what you are in process of delegating and send us the success stories! It’s what gets us out of bed in the morning. Take care!