If You Can’t Delegate, Your Company Can’t Grow: The

Many entrepreneurs who have started their own small
companies are "hands-on" bosses. During the start-up
phase they do everything themselves — from securing
financing to designing and setting up the marketing to
handling the company’s day-to-day operations. While
this hands-on attitude is great for a small start-up,
sooner or later it becomes impossible for a single
individual to do everything required. There are only so
many hours in the day, and eventually a small-business
owner needs to delegate activities to others.

by Jeffrey Moses

It can be said that the basis for successful delegation
is half knowledge, half attitude. The following seven
key essentials of delegation illustrate this.

1. Realize that you are not the only person who can do
things exactly right. As long as you retain the
ultimate responsibility for all delegated tasks — and as
long as you are available for consultation at various
stages of the work — your company will retain your
personal style.

2. Establish written descriptions of the tasks you are
delegating, and be sure that your employees understand
every detail. Descriptions of tasks should include:
methods, goals, means of accomplishment (finances,
employees, equipment, etc.), quality of work done,
means to define that quality and timelines for
completion of each stage of work.

3. You can retain varying degrees of control by
requiring your delegates to provide written or verbal
reports at specific stages of completion, or at
specific time intervals throughout the course of a
project. The amount of control you retain over a
delegated project is determined by how often you meet
with the people doing the work, or how often you
require them to report to you.

4. When delegating a project to a team, assign
responsibility to only one person. If you leave
ultimate responsibility vague, your results could be
vague.

5. Try not to tell people exactly how to do things.
Sure, you have your own style, but even if someone does
something a little differently than you would, the
project can still be 100 percent successful.

6. Don’t start by delegating large, extremely important
projects. Take things one step at a time by starting
with smaller, less important tasks. As your experience
with delegating progresses, you’ll feel more
comfortable assigning larger projects, and you’ll be
better at the delegation process.

7. Look ahead to the time when your company has grown
to such a point that even your delegates will have to
delegate some responsibilities to others. This second
stage of delegation is key for growing companies and
requires that you will have to feel even more
comfortable with the delegation process. It’s important
to train your key employees to delegate, so when the
time comes they will feel confident and have the
experience required.

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