EntreprenHERO

Stop doing it. Teach someone else to do it.

For a business owner, one of the most useful changes is also very plain: stop doing things yourself and teach other people to do them instead.

I have deliberately written TEACH.

If you think of the job as delegation and it does not work, the easy conclusion is that you have not found the right person. If you think of it as teaching and it does not work, you have another question to answer: did you manage to teach it properly?

That question puts some of the work back on you. Which is inconvenient, but useful.

I made this point in a post about New Year's goals. Setting a goal can be exciting. You have the new diary, the plan and the energy to explain how this year is going to be different. Then ordinary life arrives.

A different result needs a different distribution of your energy. If the same tasks keep taking your time and attention, writing a new target does very little to change what happens on Monday.

In a business, moving competence from you to the organisation changes that distribution. Other people can carry out work you previously had to do. The organisation has more ability, instead of simply having a busier owner.

This includes complicated work. You have to break it into parts that can be taught, rather than look for somebody who already knows everything you know. If it took you years to learn the whole job, expecting a new employee to absorb it all at once is not much of a training plan.

Pick the part you can explain and teach. Work on that with the person who will do it. There will be another part after it.

The objective is staff who can produce a result independently. Put the effort there.

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