Stories of business success in pop culture tend to focus on the figure of the genius entrepreneur. Yet no great enterprise is built alone. Successful businesses are built on successful cooperation, whether between partners, among colleagues, or with contracted or outsourced professionals. What sets a great business leader apart is their ability to maximize such teamwork — to delegate effectively.
Just what does it take to delegate effectively? On a recent episode of “Entrepreneurs on Fire”, John Lee Dumas’ podcast spotlighting advice from various business leaders, Magic’s co-founder and president Aaron Kemmer talked about the practical aspects of effective delegation.
Here are some of the things the episode covers:
“A good time to start delegating is before you think you should.”
Too often, people only think about delegating when they’re already overwhelmed with work. Good delegation, though, requires preparation: setting objectives, talking about protocols, training in methods — all that and more.
Learn about what to delegate, picking a person to leave it to, and how to get started before work overwhelms you.
“A really important thing in business: experiment until you get some traction.”
Finding an approach that works — in operations, marketing, or anything else — can take a lot of trial and error. But tapping freelances and independent contracts can help speed things along, especially if you can do so remotely. With flexible remote work, businesses have more options for testing new processes, trying them out, and scrapping them if they don’t work.
What sort of workers or work arrangements work best for this? The episode touches on a few of the possibilities.
Maximizing Communication: “The fastest way to make decisions.”
If you’re delegating to the right people, they won’t need you to spell out every task for them. The best people have good judgment, and use it—which can sometimes cause friction in work. Communication is the key to solving these sorts of issues. More specifically, knowing how to communicate to make decisions quickly, therefore freeing people up to do their work.
Good communication eliminates ambiguity. The episode talks about one of the tricks we use at Magic to get everyone working from the same page.
Check out the episode here:
