The Reluctant Entrepreneur: Turning Dreams into Profits

EFFECTIVE LEADERS KNOW HOW TO DELEGATE

There is something to be said for doing everything yourself—you know it has been done right. But as the CEO of a growing company, you can no longer do that. You have to start passing responsibility on to others. That’s the only way to free up your time to focus on the important work of continually improving your business.

There are two things that you should never delegate: the ultimate responsibility for sales and the ultimate responsibility for product quality. But if a project can be completed successfully by someone else … delegate it. You should also delegate everything that is beneath your level of ability.

And don’t think you should delegate only to someone who already has experience in doing the task at hand. Use delegation as an opportunity to keep your employees challenged and allow them to learn new skills.

HOW TO DELEGATE LIKE A PRO

Strong leaders remain strong by delegating as many tasks as possible. Here’s how to do it:

• Meet with the person you’ve chosen to delegate the job to. Tell him why you chose him.
• Define your objectives. Specify what you would consider to be “success.”
• Set a deadline for completion of the job. Explain why that deadline is important. Mark it on your schedule.
• Schedule intermediate deadlines for him to give you progress reports. Mark those deadlines on your schedule and make sure they’re met.
• Monitor his progress, but let him do the work without interfering. And make sure he gets the credit—and the ...