How to Delegate Effectively as Founder
Read Time: 4 min
How I work less achieve more and live free as business leader.
I will also show you how to write the prefect task descriptions.
I am working 4-6 hours a day at the moment.
When I started my first business, it was 10-16 hours a day.
This worked great for a while.
Until the initial motivation ebbed down and the sprint turned into a marathon.
I started having trouble falling asleep and woke up often during the night.
My thoughts were spinning in my head all the time.
I started multi-tasking a lot because I had trouble focusing on a single thing.
This must be a manpower problem, right?
So we added more hands to the team.
More hands didn't help.
What am I doing wrong?
People came to me non-stop, asking questions about the tasks I gave them.
They also didn't bring good results or did the wrong thing, so I had to do it myself.
And I had to decide tiny things within their responsibilities.
In short, I was the bottleneck for the work I delegated.
I handed tasks to my team instead of outcomes.
I needed to learn how to delegate effectively.
Effective delegating is necessary to be a good leader, and I didn't have that skill.
At that point, this was the most essential skill I had to learn to make my business succeed.
Today, I want to share with you my simple 3-step system to delegate any task or responsibility.
This process enables me to work 4-6 hours on average.
How To Delegate Any Task In 3 Simple Steps
1. Understand the Outcome
When you want to delegate something to someone else, you need to know exactly what outcome you want.
If you don't know what you want, how can you ask someone else to give it to you?
Be very specific when describing the outcome.
When you know the outcome, apply the AED framework to it.
AED stands for Automate, Eliminate, Delegate.
Never delegate anything that could be automated.
Never automate anything that could be eliminated.
Ask the following questions about the outcome:
Is it essential? → If not, eliminate it.
Can I automate it? → If not, delegate it.
Doing this eliminated a lot of the responsibilities I wanted to delegate.
2. Hand Over Clearly Described Tasks
To hand off an outcome to someone else, we must describe it unambiguously.
As a general rule:
A task description is unclear if the assignee needs to ask further questions to finish it.
So next time a team member asks you a question, remember:
They're not stupid.
You communicated badly.
Take responsibility for that.
Here is my list of best practices for writing clear task descriptions:
There are no ambiguities in the description.
The description is complete; no step is missing.
The description contains a clear, actionable, and measurable goal.
If this goal has multiple parts, display it as a to-do list.
The description answers the following questions:
Why is this task necessary or even critical?
What will be the damage if this task isn't completed?
What will be the gain if this task is completed?
Where and how will the result of this task be used?
Who needs to be updated on the results of the task?
Are there any dependencies on other tasks?
What is this task's priority compared to other tasks (e.g. high, medium, low)?
The time constraints are explicit:
How much time should this task take to complete?
By when should it be completed?
The description uses easy-to-understand language.
The instructions should be understood by a 7th grader or lower.
Use short “As is”-sentences.
Use simple words.
If you use acronyms, immediately explain them.
Avoid passive voice.
Highlight important parts visually.
Keep adverbs to a minimum.
Each step of the described processes is actionable.
Provide links to further reading and materials.
Fewer questions the assignee needs to ask you.
These links are embedded right where the topic comes up.
The description contains tips, tricks, and best practices.
The description asks the assignee to note feedback to improve the execution.
The description makes clear who to contact if something is unclear.
If it is a recurring task, the description contains a link to a video showing the entire execution.
If a specific tool, platform, or template should be used, the description names it.
BTW, I used the writing style best practices from the list to write the list. 😉
This is quite a long list.
So we don't need to remember all this, I created a ChatGPT tool that creates clear task descriptions for us.
Don't delegate if you can automate. 😉
Go and copy my prompt.
>>> Get my Perfect Task Description Generator here.
When you have your task description, have a handover meeting with the assignee.
Go together over the description and answer every question the assignee might have.
If the assignee leaves the handover meeting with questions, you failed this meeting.
The goal is to reduce the necessary interaction until the review meeting.
Every back and forth with the assignee will slow down the assignee and eat your time.
Schedule the review meeting right from the handover meeting.
I was surprised how many people think they have time until the release date to show me their first results. 😑
Leave a buffer between the review meeting and the deadline of a task.
Plan for the worst case.
Then celebrate that it didn't happen.
3. Review And Iterate On The Results
Have a review meeting for the results when the assignee is done.
During the first half of the review meeting, you assess together if the outcome was achieved.
If not, adjust the timeline and task description and try again.
In 99% of cases, this was a communication issue, not a competency issue.
If an assignee does the wrong thing, it is usually a problem with the task description.
In the second half of the review meeting, you give mutual feedback to improve the process.
Keep the focus on this outcome and how to improve the process leading to this outcome.
Work Less
Delegating effectively is crucial in getting to the next level with any business.
Work less, achieve more.
This will free you up to creatively shape the future of your business.
And it can give you the pause you need for future things.
This simple process enables me to work only 4-6 hours daily running my own business.
I could push it to 2h per day, but I love doing my responsibilities too much to hand them off. 😁😅
You can also use my system to train most new hires.
Effortless scaling unlocked. ✅
If you don't master delegating, you will never reach your full potential.
Steal my system and free up your schedule.
Tell me, when did delegating go wrong for you?
What was the reason for it going wrong?
Write it in the comments below.
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Thanks for reading to the end!
You rock!
Cheers,
Marcel