Our previous blog discussed prioritising tasks in order to manage time better and to delegate jobs where possible. I gave you two tasks to complete to help with this. Did you find the time to do it? It works doesn’t it?
I would love to hear any of your success stories and challenges you have had in the last week.
Now that you have prioritised your activities and decided on the tasks that you as the business owner shouldn’t be doing; how do you decide whether you should delegate that job to a team member or whether you should contract with an external firm and outsource that function or task of your business? And once you decide to delegate or outsource the task; how do you ensure that it will be carried out efficiently and to your required standard in the allotted time?
At Aspirations we have developed a system to help and I’d like to share it with you today:
- Explain the task with clear steps so that the person you are delegating it to understands the whole process – you need to be setting the rules
- Ask them to repeat back to you what you have explained to ensure they understand what you have said
- Agree what the next step should be
- Agree who is going to take on the next step
- Agree when the task should be completed by
- Check on the progress of the task at regular intervals
- Once the task is complete review the job and provide constructive feedback
- Repeat the process until the task is automatically carried out.
If the work is not completed properly then you have to ask yourself if the fault lies with you for not explaining the task clearly enough or for ensuring that it was understood correctly. Remember, whenever you point a finger at someone, there are always three fingers pointing back towards you.
Check and review your process for delegating tasks, learning from any errors to improve it for next time. Putting together a process to delegate tasks may take up some time initially but once the task has been done several times you will be able to use that time more productively.
There is also a good chance that you will have made your team member or the delegate’s job more rewarding and stretched their comfort zone.
Take 5 minutes to look at your “First Things First Matrix” and review the tasks in your “To Delegate” box – what is the first one you are going to do?
Do let me know, and remember to share your successes and challenges with delegation; I’d be delighted to learn how you got on.
Next week I will be tackling outsourcing.
Tony Kensington, FCCA
