Delegate, Don’t Micromanage

As business owners, there are numerous tasks demanding your time and attention. Hopefully you’ve got a great team to help you manage the workload. However, it can be hard for business owners to let go and share the responsibility with anyone else. When you first established your business, chances are, you did everything yourself. Your client roster may have been slim, and capital was lean, so you were the boss and staff.

Now that you’ve been successful in building your organization, you can take a step back. Maybe even take a vacation day or two. This means handing off some of the responsibilities of running your business to your loyal and talented employees. How do you know when it’s appropriate to do so? One strategy is to follow the 70% rule: if your employee is capable of doing the work 70% as well as you can, go ahead and delegate that task. You may be a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to the running of your business, and the 70% rule might make you cringe, but since you can’t clone yourself, you will have to delegate.

Entrepreneurs can have a hard time admitting things could be done another way, or that someone else’s method may be more efficient. You have an emotional attachment to your business. You’ve invested blood, sweat and tears, and you might think your way is the only right way. However, your employees bring other strengths to the team and they may have ideas for improving processes. They need to know you value them and that their input is important.

Micromanaging causes tension. It makes your team resentful and gives them the feeling you don’t think they’re competent workers. It also prevents them from learning new skills. A cross-trained employee is a greater asset to your organization, and the only way that can happen is if you let other people assume greater roles. Let your employees rise to the occasion while you focus on things only you can do as the business owner.

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