Are you the bottleneck in your business?
So many business owners feel that they cannot grow their business because they have become the bottleneck. They are in a state where everything in their business has to be approved or looked at by them before it can be put into place. Of course you can see what that creates: an ever-growing to-do list and no more time for you. You end up in the seat of putting out fires and possibly doing other people’s work even when you have a team in place. It also stifles the wonderful team you have on board as they have to wait to get their thoughts and ideas approved by you.
Take a moment and ask yourself: What would happen to your business if you were able to delegate more and much better?
Perhaps you have tried delegating in the past, and it hasn’t worked so well. You were frustrated that you didn’t get what you wanted, and you ended up taking the work back and possibly resenting that you even tried to delegate in the first place. Perhaps you are in a place where you say to yourself “I might as well do it myself,” or “I guess I’m not a good manager.”
Truth bomb: The problem isn’t that you are a bad manager. It is that you are “drive-thru delegating.”
That’s probably a term you have not heard before, so let me explain what I mean. Imagine that you are on the road in a rush to order food. You roll into the drive-thru and up to the order window, quickly mumble the order that you would like, and roll up to the payment window. Within a few short minutes your order is ready, and you take your food and drive off in a flash. The staff working at the drive-thru can barely remember the color of your car, let alone what you asked them for.
This is “drive-thru delegation.” As you drive by, you give your team member a mumbled, quick order and you are gone into the dust. The team member who has received your order has no idea what to do with it. Even though they desire to please you and do a good job, they are standing there dumbfounded in the whirlwind of you rolling by.
They don’t know what a job well done is supposed to look like
They don’t have enough information on how to proceed and they’re scared to mess up
They don’t know when this needs to be done by; being unable to prioritize
They wish they had more guidance from you
They are nervous to ask you for more details, for fear of bothering you as you are obviously very busy
In this situation, what usually happens is that your team member decides to try it on their own and hope that you will be happy with the end result. Sometimes this leads to a rabbit hole, and 2 weeks later (as they had no idea when this was actually needed), they present you with what they thought you wanted.
Your reaction: “Seriously?? Two weeks later, and it’s not even done the way I wanted! Why did I even bother? Why am I paying somebody else to do this when I can do it better, faster and cheaper?”
Typically, this is when business owners will take the work back, fire the team member, and start all over again looking for that “unicorn” team member.
Let’s be honest here, friends. More of the same drive-thru delegation will always result in the same result, no matter who you delegate to. So what needs to shift or change? What can be done differently to produce different results?
Leverage your delegation
Leverage is the ability to multiply the outcome of one's efforts without a corresponding increase in input. Better results with less effort means that you can indeed scale your business and get your freedom back.
Part of leveraging your team is to leverage your delegation. This is true whether you have a part-time contractor virtual assistant or a team of 7 full-time employees. Leveraging your delegation means you have a proven process for communicating clear goals and outcomes for the task to your team, and for your team to have access to you to get their questions answered along the way. This is when you get back the work back the way you wanted it — a true game-changer.
When you leverage delegation, your team can give back work to you:
According to your specifications
On time (or ahead of time!)
Even better than you thought it would be
Learning how to shift this way of delegation changes everything for the better. You can stop working evenings and weekends and focus more on the vision for your business as you are no longer in the weeds putting out daily fires.
But most entrepreneurs have never been taught how to delegate strategically, communicate what they want, be realistic about deadlines and coach their team members along the way so that they get what they want.
When you do, however, it allows you to let go of micromanaging your team to then use your time to focus on growth activities for your business.
Is this something that you would benefit from? Could you use your time back to grow your business instead of doing every little thing yourself or continually being frustrated by what your current team is giving you?
If you are nodding your head in agreement, then I would love to chat with you further.
