The Art of Delegation: How to Delegate - Part I
Delegation is a very important part of any business. Without it you will soon find yourself overloaded with unnecessary work. Being able to find the right people to take care of your “Small Tasks” is a chore in its own, but a worthy chore at that.
By delegating, not only will you free up some time, you will also find yourself completing more important work.
I always thought to myself that I was the only one that could complete a job and complete it well. I felt that I always had to be there and that there was no one else that could fill my shoes. As you can tell, this was not that case and I soon found out that if I was not in everyone’s face they actually completed quality work without me.
Since I have come to this new discovery, I thought it would be helpful to share the information with our readers. Below I have some steps we have learned since starting Appealing Lawn Care LLC. Read on to see how you too can delegate some of your work.
1.) Training
As of right now we have two employees. Both of them have been working for us since the beginning of the summer and have been doing exceptionally well. During the summer I always advise the guys to pay attention to where we are going so that if I ever sent them off by themselves they would know how to get there. Also, during the beginning of the year I showed them what each customer wanted and how to approach certain situations, such as, disgruntled customers and broken equipment. To my surprise they took each situation head on and did extremely well. Little-by-little I showed them the ropes and taught them what to expect on a day-to-day situation. After I felt they were trained enough I sent then off on their own. I baptized them in the fire if you will.
This applies to any business you might have. No matter what it is you do, other people can do it the same way, if not better than you do. This is what I found out and by training and teaching my employees they finally were ready to become self sufficient.
2.) Trust
The next step that needed to be implemented was trust. Without it you will find yourself in big trouble. This is a very important trait that my partner Adam and I started early into our business relationship. Either way, you need to make sure your employees are trustworthy. I implemented little tests to see if they were worthy of further teaching. I would leave a little money out to see if it ever went missing. I would send them on errands, and I would ask them to deliver information to customers to test their shyness. Once again, to my surprise both of them did very well. They delivered some times bad information like price increases to customers and they were able to handle all of the errands I gave them. Keep in mind that a few SMALL mistakes were made but this is to be expected. I make mistakes EVERY day, my employees know this and I am aware that these small mistakes will happen from time to time.
3.) Commitment
Finally I had to see how committed they were to our business success. I tested this by seeing how well they listened to corrections and suggestions. If they did something wrong with a customer’s lawn I wanted to make sure they knew it, in a nice way, and that they worked hard to correct it. Then I paid attention to how much they complained and to their desire to come to work every day. Surprisingly enough they only complained when we had a drought and work was scarce. To be totally honest this shocked me. They wanted to work and they wanted to make money. They also came to work EVERY day without question. Keep in mind that sometimes it was ninety plus degrees outside and I made them wear a uniform type outfit to keep a professional image.
All-in-all they have grown to be great employees. They pay attention to detail and they follow instruction. Honesty and discipline are just a few other traits that come to mind when describing them.
So if you want to know when it will be right to delegate some of the work, practice the above steps. This took several months but was well worth it. Soon you will find yourself more engrossed with finding new customers and dealing with cost cutting strategies. After a while you will say to yourself, “How did I ever go so long without delegating?” Good luck with this process and feel free to leave a comment about what you think.