Small Business Entrepreneur Blog

OK, I’m back. So I’ve started talking about delegation as a management process, now I will get down to delegate in a small business.

First of all if you want to delegate the right way based on the receiver abilities, it’s quite hard to have a person with the right set of skills for each task you want to delegate. So basically you will end up doing time related delegation (check part 1 of the Delegate in a small business article to see how I have defined these delegation types). And if you are doing time related delegation, it means that the receiver doesn’t have exactly the best skills to do the job. Which means the results can be or not the same quality as done by you, or it might not take the same time, resulting in deadline problems. Add to this that even if you delegate, the final responsibility will be yours, and you will see why most people fear delegating core business processes.

Now, things are even worse in a small business. First of all, you don’t have so many human resources available to delegate as much as you would need. Second, the fear to delegate is even stronger as probably the company doesn’t have several hierarchy layers to filter out any errors or problems so the results will get more or less directly to the customer.

Moreover, as Susan Ward says, in her article “Decide to delegate“, “Running a small business isn’t a job; it’s twelve jobs – or more. The typical sole proprietor who doesn’t delegate is her own manager, marketer, sales person, PR specialist, product or services developer, fundraiser, bookkeeper, human resources department, receptionist, secretary, and gofer.”. Susan’s article is in fact very good in talking about fear to delegate: “So-and-so won’t do as good a job at ________ as I do.” Or “I’ll waste too much time telling so-and-so how I want it done. It’s easier to do it myself.” and also about the cost to delegate: “It will cost me money,” is the most common excuse not to delegate. It may or may not. Delegation will certainly cost you some time, because you’ll have to research the best provider for the task you seek to delegate.”

Did I tell you that entrepreneurs are control freaks? Yes, I did in my Comments on Fred Wilson’s Ten Questions About Entrepreneurs Without Hiring Staff.  So we basically don’t want to let anything out of our hands! We want to check everything and to be part of everything. Of course, this is suicidal on the long term, for the business, for you and for your family.

The good news is that there are some ways to delegate without getting more expenses, and Becky McCray has 10 of them:

• “Family. This is where we all seem to start. Let the kids do age-appropriate tasks. Recruit extra family members to contribute. “
• “Local professionals. Give up the bookkeeping, ad design, collections, and photocopying. Turn to your local accountant, printer, attorney, or office supply store. Look around your town for more resources. Ask them what else they can do for you.”

Read Becky’s 10 Ways to Delegate . Now, grab a cup of coffee. You have way too many things to do today. Stop and delegate!

Additional resources:

Here is what Tim Berry has to say about delegation.