Delegation requires the willingness to pay for short-term failures in order to gain long-term competency.  -Dave Ramsey

The first part of “How” is “When” and the answer is, “As soon as possible, if not sooner.”

As I pointed out in my prior post post, Delegate or Die, there are way too many details for you handle alone. Those details start to pile up like a tsunami from Day One. The faster you start to delegate, the faster you will start serving clients and moving towards the vision.

When Should I Start to Delegate?

Start as soon as you have another person in the enterprise.

What tasks should I delegate?

Any task that will be repeated.

At first, you will want to hold on to certain key tasks that are fundamental to the business. These usually involve key relationships with clients and supporters. But, realistically, there is no task that cannot be delegated.

Look at it this way. You are not the organization. Suppose you get hit by the proverbial truck tomorrow. Will the vision die? Will the organization shut down? Will the board have to stop operations to figure out what to do next? There is no task that you perform that could not be performed by someone else. But they have to be equipped and trained for the task.

That brings us to the next steps.

You will usually do the task yourself the first time. That way you will know the steps to take and understand the problems.

Then you select the person to do the task and give them the assignment. In the simplest case, you tell them what needs to be done, when to do it, and how to do it. You tell them about deadlines and what standards you expect.

Then you walk them through the process. If it is complex, you might give them written steps, show them how to do it once, then watch them do it once.

Then turn them loose.

They will probably not do it the exact same way you would. They will probably not be able to achieve the same high standard of output as you. But, you had to learn also. If you don’t delegate, the organization WILL stagnate and probably wither away. It certainly won’t survive you.

I once had a flying instructor tell me his criteria for letting a student go on his first solo flight. “If, during the dual flight, I thought I was going to die three or fewer times, the student solos.”

Move them to a higher level of independence.

The goal is independent task accomplishment. There are at least five levels of independence:

1 “Report the facts to me.” Just give me information. You will still decide on the course of action and perform the task. Example: “Tell me how many clients we had to turn away last month.”

2 “Report the facts and analyze them.” This is the next level up. But I will still decide on the course of action and perform the task. This takes some of the work-load off you, but you still have to spend time on the heavy lifting. Example: “Tell me how many clients we had to turn away last month and tell me why that happened.”

3. “Report the facts, analyze them, make a recommendation, and give me a plan.” This picks up a lot more of the work. We are getting closer to the ideal. Example: “Tell me how many clients we had to turn away last month and tell me why we had to do that. Then recommend a solution, with options if you have them.” This is called “completed staff work.” That means it has been fully discussed with all interested parties. There is nothing left for you to do but sign off on any approvals.

4. “Do step 3 and execute the plan; then let me know how it works out.” This is a really big step. You will rarely go beyond this level. At this level, you may not even know there is a task until you get the final report. For long tasks, there could be monthly interim reports. The key here is to avoid surprises. The smart delegatee will make sure you know what is going on anyhow.

5. “Execute your plan, only come to me if it has problems.” This is the ultimate in trust, and it is rarely reached. In every case, they will successfully perform the task and want to tell about it, or they will have problems and will want you to know.

Would you check my work?

You should only answer “Yes” to this question once, or possibly twice. After that, more training is necessary. If you don’t find errors, your time is wasted. If you do find errors, you are just being subjected to upward delegation, which is the opposite of what you intended. They are just training you to do their work.

To recap

• Delegate every repeated task as soon as possible.
  Your mission and vision depend on it.
• Perform the task yourself once.
• Select the person to perform the task.
• Tell them the what, where, when, how, and why.
  Make sure these are very clear.
• If necessary, walk them through the task once.
• Then watch them perform the task once.
• Then move them up the Delegation levels as fast as possible.

Happy delegating!

P.S. Derek Shivers wrote a fascinating little book, Anything You Want, about his experience with delegation. You can find a summary here.

To summarize the summary, every time he was asked a question or asked for a decision, his process was to:

• Gather everybody around.
• Answer the question, and explain the philosophy.
• Make sure everyone understands the thought process.
• Ask one person to write it in the manual.
• Let them know they can decide this without me next time.

After two months of this, there were no more questions. In fact, he took a month-long vacation, and no one noticed.