If you could wave a magic wand, you would spend all of your working time doing only the things you enjoyed the most and were the most profitable to your organization. For most business owners, entrepreneurs and managers, however, this is rarely the case. There are two large factors in this state of affairs, to be addressed in this post:
- Distractions, both self-caused and external
- Ineffective or absent delegation
Distractions/self-imposed.
The ubiquitous presences of the internet and mobile devices that can access the internet and cell networks have vastly improved our lives in countless ways. However, they have also damaged and intruded upon our lives in other, subtler ways.
For example, there is essentially no boundary between work time and personal time. Most people are expected to respond to calls and texts either immediately or within a very short time frame. This means that even when you are at home or doing something else, you still are expected to be available. This can be a self-reinforcing cycle, because the faster you respond, the faster future responses are expected.
Even with ordinary e-mail, it’s quite easy to get distracted into frequent e-mail checking or feeling compelled to respond to everything that comes to your inbox.
Social media is another two-sided coin. Facebook and its competitors can be great tools to find family members and friends on, to communicate efficiently to geographically spread out areas, and generally to have some fun with. But, it’s also easy to start clicking on picture sets, links, and posts, and before you know it, you’re sucked down the you-tube black hole!
Non-electronic distractions are common as well. These can be seen as sticky notes plastered on any available surface, open files on desks, piles of unprocessed papers on desks, etc. These distractions get you off your train of thought and make it difficult or impossible to concentrate on your primary activities.
The most effective way to deal with these is through discipline and systematizing your information flows. Allen’s “Getting Things Done” is the definitive text on this subject, but this will involve some habit-breaking on your part.
Distractions/external
Some positions are heavily distraction oriented, including anything dealing with phones, appointments, or contact with the public. If you are an owner or manager, you will still have distractions, but most of these come from your own team, not the customer or public. Some offices have a culture of interruption, where anyone is free to interrupt anyone else at any time.
Effective ways to deal with this include start with an acknowledgement of the interruption culture, and agreement to work towards changes. Regular short meetings or huddles help deal with short term, minor issues all at the same time. In/out boxes are crucial for handling paper information.
Only Do What Only You Can Do!
Effective Delegation
Now we get to the art form. Delegation is something that happens in most growing organizations in a haphazard way. Many times the owner will assign tasks to other employees, but still feel the necessity to check the work quality or be available to answer procedural questions. This is closer to doing the work twice than it is to delegation. After you graduate from the infant stages of your business, you are actually hampering your growth and harming your bottom line by performing tasks that others can do.
Here are some simple guidelines to becoming a better delegator:
- Critical areas of responsibility must be clearly assigned as a bottom line responsibility o a single individual. Common areas are service delivery and quality, sales, marketing, finance, operations, HR, design/engineering, legal, and customer service. These areas can be sub-divided, but the responsibility for a particular outcome has to be assigned to a single individual.
- The context of the responsibility must be clear. A set of marching orders without understanding the mission, or “why” will fail when conditions change even mildly.
- Procedural manuals and/or checklists must be created and updated.
- Training for the execution of the job must be provided for a limited time.
This is a fair amount of set-up work and foundation building, but these basic steps are critical if you ever expect your employees to be able to effectively assume the management of an area in your organization.
The ultimate target in this area is this: “Only do what only you can do.”