I’ve written before on the critical importance of delegating or outsourcing to give you time to focus on the big picture and develop the right strategic direction so your business can grow.

It’s not easy.  Some people have an extraordinarily difficult time doing it.  I have a friend who’s a very successful but rather harried and definitely overworked leader of a national organization.  She often says:  “I can do it myself in the time it takes to show someone else how to do it.”  I respond: “Yes.  When I teach someone how to do something it takes about as much time as it would take for me to do it myself.  Maybe a bit longer. But that person is now able to do it forever.” Do the math. It’s an investment of time that will bring you a great return on your investment.

To succeed, without working yourself to death, we all must learn to delegate or outsource.  Finding and training people to delegate or outsource to will give you a support system which will facilitate your success:

First – decide what to delegate: the point of delegating is to free yourself, first, from routine, low level or mechanical tasks which someone else can do, perhaps better and more efficiently than you.

Delegate anything low priority or which doesn’t require your personal attention to achieve your primary goals.

Select the most capable person for the task: you may not like to file, but there’s someone, somewhere, who does.  Let them do it.

Give clear direction and reach an agreement on expected results: You should be willing to take the time, up front, to review your expectations and reach an agreement on what the end result should be. Communication is a key component of this process.

Be available for questions and mid course decisions

Set a clear deadline with accomplishment milestones along the way

Finally, give credit to your assistant, volunteer or support staff

The only way to develop a support system for yourself is to let the people you delegate to have the responsibility to do what you’ve asked of them; let them do it their own way; let them make their own mistakes and learn from them. Praise them when they complete their assignment. Point out that the completed task contributes to the success of the company as a whole. Give them credit within the company.

Here’s an example from Chaitanya Sagar on how learning to delegate: ,Delegate or Outsource – If You Want Your Business To Grow

“…In the initial days of my company, I did everything myself. I spoke to customers; I interacted with investors; and wrote business plans. At the same time, I cleaned my office and went long distances just to deliver legal documents somewhere. I spent a lot of time on those tasks which were not strategic or something that contributed to my customers. I did everything because I had nothing better to do. If I hired someone else, I would pay them and I’d have to sit idle!

As a small business grows, and as the scale at which a task is done increases, you have to find ways to get the time to focus on the bigger picture. If you don’t, you will get caught up in myriad routine activities, and can’t progress on strategic areas of your business. You have to make time to steer your business in the right direction. And you can do that by delegating work to others, by outsourcing, and at times, it’s as simple as asking the other party to visit your office instead of you visiting them!

My startup has been growing gradually. And some of the rules I had learned in the initial days are obsolete already. Though I saved precious dollars in the initial days doing all the routine work, time and again, I found myself asking myself, “Why am I doing this? How does my customer benefit from it? Should I not be working on something that enhances value to my customer?”

So now I do what is strategic and outsource many activities like coding for my website, marketing material work, accounting, graphic design, etc. In areas I do outsource, I am glad I do because it led to a lot of progress. Inn hindsight, the decision to outsource my work to others has greatly paid off in the following ways:

1. Where it was not my core competency, I rode on other’s competency and made wonderful progress.

2. When the project (such as product development) was over, I had the ability to scale down the activity reducing the “burn rate” without having to fire employees (had I hired them).

3. I was able to save time and could focus on the strategic aspects of the business.”

What about you?  Do you have any delegating or outsourcing examples or experiences to share?  We would like to hear from you.