So, what does delegation actually mean? Delegation is a term used to describe splitting assignments or responsibilities among others and usually the direction comes from a manager and trickles down to the rest of the team. “Delegation is important because it increases profits … and it also enables you, as an owner, to live your life,” says Dominic Chiarella, owner, coach and speaker from www.7of7best.com.
Delegate it right
There are three solutions to delegation: a short-term process, a foundational mid-term system and applications for long-term delegation.
The first solution has five main steps. You must find the right employees and identify all the tasks that you do throughout the day. For example, those tasks might be getting the mail or looking at contracts. When you identify all the tasks that you want to delegate, create a simple, one-page, step-by-step method to do that task.
Chiarella’s method goes something like this:
- WHAT: Task name
- WHY: Task description
- HOW: Who is responsible?
- NEEDS: Resources needed to do the work
- CLARITY: Clear result of the completed task
He explained that to be efficient, you must give your employees some expectations. “You have to train, train and train them again,” he says. “We start as owners first.”
The second solution is finding the right employee for the delegated task. According to Chiarella, organizational charts are representative of the future. There must be strategic objectives to making an organizational chart that makes sense for your business.
For solution three, long-term delegation, there are three components called applications. The first application is human resources. This includes growth, development and money.
The second is hiring and orientation. “Ask yourself, do these people fit your core values and culture?” he says. “Ask questions to help you expose their skills.”
The third application is career development. Helping your employees develop their careers will help your company.