Learning How to Delegate
Learning to delegate, experts say, is one of the most important business-ownership skills there is. Here's a step-by-step plan to make it happen:
1. CHOOSE YOUR DEPUTY. You may not have a single employee, but now is the time to create that resource, to bolster your company in your absence. If not, “the consequences will hurt the business even more in resentment and lost productivity later on,” says Marian Baker, a Chicago counselor and career coach.
Get over the idea that delegating to him or her means you're shirking. “It's standard procedure in any business if you have to take a leave of absence,” says Hugh Daubek, marketing professor with the Entrepreneurship Center at Purdue University-Calumet. If you have a trusted salesperson, promote him to manage in your absence. If they're part-timers, use two. Increase their commission, pay a salary, or both. You can promote teamwork by tying his commission to the performance of the entire sales force, suggests Anderson. To learn more about managing, consider a Small Business Administration online course.
2. TAP TECHNOLOGY. Use a call-forwarding service so your incoming calls wind up with your new deputy. In many large cities, you can easily find telephone-hosting firms which are low in cost and (via the Web) handle complex telephony that once required an operator-manned exchange (incoming calls can ring to a number of outside lines, sequentially, for example; the system can be controlled from afar by keystrokes on a laptop, etc.) Then check in regularly. Schedule a weekly conference call, says Beth Sirull, co-author of Creating Your Life Collage: Strategies for Solving the Work/Life Dilemma. (Watch and hear Sirull discuss her ideas)
3. MAKE A LIST. Offer your new deputy a thorough list of clients with notes on their recent purchases and even things like their habits and quirks,—things like 'He can only meet on weekends.' Make a list, if appropriate, of vendors and shippers. And when your deputy does something you wouldn't have, hold your tongue, Sirrull says: “Just because (he) makes a different decision than you would have doesn't mean it was a bad decision.”
4. EASE BACK. When the time comes for you to return, don't come charging in like rolling thunder. Says Daubek: “There are three functions: Sales, sales management, and overall management. You can be back at overall management fastest.” As your small-business duties pile back up, chances are your care-giving responsibilities haven't all gone away. So bring your new delegating savvy to bear on the homefront. Try online grocery shopping, and tap a hired hand to help with laundry and housework.
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