Notebook

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Do you often feel that there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done, or that if you don’t do something yourself, it won’t get done right?

Do you ever feel tasks are too complicated to explain to someone else? Are you frequently behind schedule in your work? Are you always the last one in the office after everyone else has gone home?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you could be suffering from a very common managerial malady you don’t know how to delegate.

You’re not alone. Many entrepreneurs, managers, supervisors and workaholics find themselves micro-managing tasks they could easily assign to other people.

Delegating can be a real problem for business owners who believe nobody knows how to do the work like they do, or for those who recite the classic micro-manager mantra, “It’s faster (or easier) if I just do it myself.”

In some ways, it’s hard to argue with this philosophy. But in order to keep on top of things and not get bogged down with minutia, successful entrepreneurs and managers must learn to delegate.

For one thing, the ability to delegate is an extremely important aspect of time management. No one can do everything all of the time there just aren’t enough hours in the day.

Granted, it takes a commitment of time to delegate, as you have to educate the person you’re delegating to about what you want him or her to do. But that has to be viewed like the cost of doing business a necessary evil.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle to overcome when you have trouble delegating is the sense of losing control. This is very tough for some people. Perhaps the best way to tackle it is to focus on the specific areas that you can gain greater control over as you have more time to deal with them.

These may include strategic planning, business development and customer retention, to name a few. When you think about it, these important areas are probably the ones you really want to be in control of anyway, so the trick becomes one of identifying the areas you’ll feel most comfortable about loosening your grip on.

To help identify those areas, establish a hierarchy of business functions in which you rank the areas according to their importance. Make a list of all of the business functions you’re routinely involved in: business development, customer retention, strategic planning, marketing, advertising, human resources, payroll, billing, collections, and so forth.

List these functions in order of priority (use whatever definition of priority you see fit). You’ll probably feel most comfortable getting other people involved in the areas at, or toward, the bottom of your list. Just seeing what you’ve listed at the bottom might make it easier for you to delegate at least some tasks in those areas.

Now that you’re perhaps willing to try delegating some activities, you’ll need to identify the person with whom you’ll feel most comfortable assigning activities. Especially when you first start delegating, it’s important that you choose someone you feel confident will succeed.

To help ensure success, it’s critical that the person you select is adequately trained to undertake what’s required. This may take some time, and possibly some money, as it may require putting an employee through a more formal training process or going even further by bringing in a more knowledgeable new hire.

This benefits your business in the long run, however, as the more knowledgeable and well-trained your employees are, the more valuable they become to your business.

In addition, having a more experienced employee to lighten your workload and provide a level of backup in the event you’re not available can prove to be invaluable in a crisis, and provide a sense of security every day.

When delegating, it’s important that you’re very clear and exact about what you want the person to do, the results you expect, and a time frame in which you want the work completed. Perhaps most important, however, is outlining just how much authority this person has and how the two of you will handle questions, mistakes and other situations that might arise.

Remember, you will be tempted to go back to the “it’s easier if I just do it myself” philosophy, but hang in there. Give both yourself and your employee a chance to succeed.

When work is delegated successfully, not only will you have more time to focus on the priorities at the top of your list, but the people working for you will benefit as well. They’ll see that you trust them to complete important assignments, and will feel more respected for their ability to perform.

As they take on higher levels of responsibility, they’ll feel that they’re making a greater contribution to the success of the business and will be more committed to their work, the company and you. You could also see a positive effect on your bottom line because employee satisfaction and loyalty are key components in the ongoing success of a business.

Effective delegation can help just about any business owner, entrepreneur or manager become more productive. In particular, it lets overworked professionals find more time for themselves and their families, and enjoy better mental health.

Mark Hafner is president of Celtic Capital Corp. He can be reached at [email protected].

Entrepreneur’s Notebook is a regular column contributed by EC2, The Annenberg Incubator Project, a center for multimedia and electronic communications at the University of Southern California. Contact James Klein at (213) 743-1759 with feedback and topic suggestions.

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