“D” is for Delegate!

Delegate, Don’t Procrastinate!

Have you heard that a lot? Have you thought that a lot? Have people around you been telling you that you need to delegate some stuff so you have a life?

If you’re an owner of a company, or an executive, you’ve probably got a lot on your plate, and sometimes you’re not sure how you’re going to get everything done. You’ve gotten so used to just doing it all, you’ve forgotten that there are other people out there that can do things for you, and they specialize in doing these things. When they do these things (more on these “thing” in a bit), it’ll leave you to take care of that business you’ve been building.

So what “things” take up a lot of time for you?

• Email: How much time you spend weeding through your emails before you can actually get to the business of working on your business, rather than in it.
• Confirming Appointments: Do you really need to do that? most of the time, no. Yet if you don’t have a dedicated assistant, you’re probably finding that you’re doing the confirming. Or – if you’re not confirming your appointments, how many times do you find yourself having them cancel at the last minute or the person you’re to meet with just doesn’t show up.
• Preparing Correspondence: Even in this advent of the technical age, preparing an email response is the norm rather than the exception in business correspondence. Many times deals are made through email and electronic signatures are acceptable. But do you really need to be the one that does the preparation of the documents, creating the attachments that need to go with it and ensuring that it gets delivered to the party that needs it.
• Research: Yes, sometimes when you’re researching something you get ideas for other ways you can take the research, but many times that’s just an avoidance tactic. When you can assign research for a particular issue to someone else, you’ll get a more targeted approach to the end result.

Is there more that you could delegate? Absolutely! But these seem to be the top 4 that are the biggest drains of time for busy small business owners. When they assign these tasks to an assistant – whether virtual or in office – they find that their time is better managed and they’re less stressed.

Let’s examine my client “L”: She owns a boutique law firm with three attorneys – including herself – and two in-office assistants. Now, its common for two attorneys to share an assistant, but because of the quality of service she and the firm gave to their clients, they were finding themselves working much harder and being more and more stressed about having the time to do it all – and do it at the level they’d been doing it.

“L” was referred to me by another one of my clients because she said that she was beginning to feel overwhelmed and she was afraid that the rest of the staff was feeling it, too. After we talked, she agreed to let me take over confirming her calendar for her for a couple of weeks. Since then, I’ve also taken over preparing the hearing files for all attorneys on staff, handling the calender for all attorneys and when someone is out, I pitch in and help in whatever way I can by preparing documents, speaking with clients, etc.

When you realize that delegation is not about letting go of control, but rather gaining control over portions of your life that’s gotten out of control – you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.

If you’d like to take a short survey to find out what you can delegate – email me and I’ll send it to you and together we can talk about how you can get some more control of your day!

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