Previously on … The Delegation Deception
- Delegation creates bottlenecks for multi-6 and 7-figure business owners
- This is because delegation is a verb, which means someone always has to do it
- Even with the best systems in place, delegation doesn't take decisions off your plate
People often tell me they’ve tried letting their team members make decisions.
It usually goes something like this:
This is clearly not sustainable.
For one, the sheer volume of decisions this founder needs to make is overwhelming.
For two, every time her team checks in with her about a decision, she gets right sucked back down into the day-to-day operations of the business.
In other words, she isn’t really letting them make many decisions at all. She’s delegating the work … and then micromanaging the how.
Just check out this article from Harvard Business Review entitled “Signs That You’re A Micromanager.”
While the entire article is fantastic (and I recommend you read it if you have the time), the part that immediately jumped out at me was this:
If you’re like most micromanagers, you probably don’t even know that you’re doing it. Yet the signs are clear:
- You’re never quite satisfied with deliverables.
- You often feel frustrated because you would’ve gone about the task differently.
- You laser in on the details and take great pride and /or pain in making corrections.
- You constantly want to know where all your team members are and what they’re working on.
- You ask for frequent updates on where things stand.
- You prefer to be cc’d on emails.
Now, I understand why people do this. After all, it’s not like your team can read your mind.
And so if you want to make sure you get what you want … you need to tell them, don’t you?
Well, yes.
But notice the nuance there.
You need to tell them WHAT you want them to achieve, not HOW you want it to happen.
After all, if your team were to come to you one day having figured out how to increase lead flow by 50%… with costs per lead going down, and without doing unethical or illegal …
Would you care that they’re doing it via Google ads instead of Facebook ads?
I’m guessing the answer is “of course not!”
At the end of the day, what most of us actually care about is what gets accomplished – not the specifics of how:
| The How | The What |
|---|---|
|
Should we run ads on FB or on Google? |
I don’t care, as long as we get qualified leads at a good price. |
|
Should we move to ActiveCampaign, or stay on Keap? |
I don’t care, as long as deliverability is good and it’s not super expensive. |
|
Should we add more 1:1 calls, or introduce another group session? |
I don’t care, as long as we're profitable and clients are well taken care of. |
|
Should we track clicks or opens? |
I don’t care, as long as we improve the number of people who end up buying. |
|
Should this message be sent as a text or an email? |
I don’t care, as long as people read it. |
The problem is that most people aren’t used to differentiating between these types of decisions.
But the difference is quite simple:
HOW decisions are about the tactics of implementation.
WHAT decisions are about the results that are achieved.
The trick is that when you delegate, you end up mixing the “what” decisions and “how” decisions together:
You don’t just say what result you want accomplished (more leads, more sales, higher retention, better results)…
You also specify how it should be done (with SOPs, explicit direction, or by needing to approve the work after it’s done).
This is why you end up stuck; because every time you dictate the how instead of just the what …
- You dilute your own productivity and you run out of capacity to get important things done.
- You stunt your team members’ development and demoralize them.
- You create an organizational vulnerability when your team isn’t used to functioning without your presence and heavy involvement.
Sound familiar?
- No time to work on your own creative projects...
- Demoralized team members that you have to chase...
- Being unable to take a real vacation...
It’s pretty much a blow-by-blow description of every problem that delegation was supposed to solve.
Well, now you can see why it doesn’t work.
Because the how decisions are the ones that your team should making on their own.
Imagine what would happen if your team were actually freed up to use their skills and expertise to figure out how to make things happen?
Actually, scratch that.
You don’t need to imagine it; here are a few examples of what happens when you let your team make the “how” decisions:
And remember Amy?
The agency owner who had more clients than she could handle … who was working 60+ hours per week … and who had tried delegating only for it to fail her when she needed it most?
Here’s how the rest of her story goes:
I was so stuck in the day to day. Even just the thought of bringing on a new client was enough to make me say, 'Oh, God, I don't know if I can do this.'
Now I’ve got a full-time account manager and we're almost ready to hire another person part-time. I keep thinking, 'I should be working more, because we’re bringing in so much more money.' But that’s the goal, right?
Amy Crane
Social Lab Media
When you design your team this way, you create opportunities for them to bring their own experience and genius ideas to the table.
Your Genius × Their Genius = Multiplied Genius
Now, I mentioned earlier that there are four types of decisions in your business.
The first two types are HOW decisions and WHAT decisions.
If all you did was let go of the “how” and focus on the “what” … you’d be miles ahead.
But this idea of letting your team make decisions doesn’t stop there.
In fact, it’s entirely possible that there might be other people on your team who could define the “what”, too.
This isn’t about finding a “unicorn” middle manager who can do everything you can.
But it does relate to the remaining two types of decisions.
Want a hint? It looks a little something like this…
Keep reading for the full reveal … plus a complete breakdown of the process to follow, if you want to install this framework into your own business.
