For a lot of business owners, delegating work can be a difficult decision. Offloading tasks to others can feel like you’re losing control of your own business—a compelling reason to keep doing everything yourself.
But delegation is more than just a process. It’s a way to free yourself, and to bring stability, ability, and soundness to your business.
How much time do you spend on tasks that could be done by someone else? Wouldn’t you be better off spending that time on growing your business instead?
The benefits of delegation
Paying someone else to do something you can do yourself may seem like a bad idea. But delegating work to others can pay for itself many times over. And whether you ask an admin house to look after your customer service, or a professional bookkeeping service to crunch some numbers, the time it gives you to work on your business makes it an investment, not a cost.
Of course, that can create a dilemma for some business owners. Should you use the money and time you’ve saved to work on the business or take a well-earned holiday? It’s another reason many small business owners insist on doing everything themselves.
And nothing adds insult to injury more than having the delegated work being done quicker and more accurately than you could ever manage. You forget they have an entire team of employees and managers focusing on that one task. All you notice is that people have stopped asking for your advice, pestering you with questions, and distracting you from those elusive profit-building schemes.
And it doesn’t feel right.
Delegation is crucial
It’s been proven time and again that effective delegation is a crucial part of any business’ success. So what are you more afraid of—letting go of the reins and the need to deal with every detail yourself, or achieving success now that you can focus on growth initiatives such as planning, marketing and meeting potential clients?
Making the decision to focus on your core competencies, and have other people look after everything else, won’t be easy. It may even clash with your ideas on what it means to be an entrepreneur in the first place.
But it will also help you mitigate stress, and restore some much-needed personal balance in your life. And in the long run that will benefit you and your business.
