😤 Why You Struggle To Delegate

Hey friend,

Do you get to the end of the week wishing you had more time?

I can’t hear you, but I think you said yes.

I’ve always struggled with delegation, but it’s recently hit me in the face that I must conquer this skill to have a greater impact.

So if you’re somebody struggling to find the time to get through your current workload, let alone everything else you want to do, this newsletter is for you.

Let’s get into it.

💭 Thought of the week

Replace “Can I?” with “Should I?”

Delegation, like any skill, is something we must intentionally learn.

In traditional career paths, it’s not a skill we are taught. In fact, we’re encouraged throughout our lives to do everything ourselves.

Imagine a teacher giving you homework.

If you turned around to your friend and got them to do it for you, you’d be in detention. If you used AI to do it for you, to take a modern example, you’d probably be expelled.

But to achieve anything of scale, you need to work with talented people to act above and beyond your own capabilities. That’s a whole new game.

I went to Tony Robbins’ Business Mastery event last week. Tony here owns 107 companies.

The kicker? He looked less stressed than me and I own just one business!

So what’s Tony doing differently than you and I?

The short answer is that he’s a Business Owner. He owns his businesses and doesn’t run the day-to-day of them. Every business he owns has leadership and management teams, alongside the “doers” who get the work done.

Tony is operating from a point of leverage that most of us never get to until we realize it’s the only way to grow a business at scale. When that clicks, our mindset begins to shift.

During the event, Tony outlined that it’s the role of the business owner to identify “what” needs to be done and to articulate “why” it’s so important. But, as most of us then trip up on, it’s not our job to figure out the “how”.

Identifying “how” something should be done is the role of the team. That’s why you hired them… right?

If you’re anything like me, you’re probably jumping in to identify the solution behind every problem your business faces, both small and large, instead of trusting other people to do them.

Up until now, you’ve been rewarded individually for what you bring to the table, but as a business owner, you’re not being measured by the same scorecard. (I’m sorry that nobody told you this before).

The “Should I?” Framework

It’s time to act differently.

An Individual Contributor responds to a potential task with “Can I do this?” It’s our trained default reaction and it’s this language that is holding us back.

“Can I do this?” is imposing “Am I capable of doing this?” which frames a task in its relative difficulty.

To be a business owner you need to replace “Can I?” with “Should I?”

As the most senior person in your organisation, it’s true that you can do almost every task required in your business. And your mentality right now would be to do all of them “If only I had the time!!!”

But delegation is not about difficulty. It’s about choice.

It’s not: “Can I respond to this enquiry that’s just come in?”

It’s not: “Can I create a list of prospects to reach out to?”

It’s not: “Can I review this content so it’s approved for next week?”

The correct question is “Should I?” Should you do it or should somebody else?

Whether you have a VA, freelancers, employees or a management team, as a business owner you must protect your time.

It’s time to create that buffer.

A task comes in:

1. Eliminate - Does this need to be done? (Y/N)

2. Should I? - Does this need to be done by me? (Y/N)

3. Can AI? - Could this be done by AI? (Y/N)

4. Who Not How - Who can do this for me?

What you take on in your “Yes” pile should be limited to only what’s in your own job description. Yep, I recommend writing your own job description as a business owner so that it’s very clear to your team what you do and don’t do.

Before delegating work to a team member, it’s now important to consider if an AI tool can do it. Machines will continue to be our cheapest form of labour. Can I? → Can AI? 🤖 

If you’ve identified that the work does need to be done, and that it can’t be eliminated or automated. First “simplify” the task and then delegate it to a team member.

I hope you win back days of your life by applying this framework. If this was helpful to you, please reply to this email to let me know! 🚀

💡 A perspective to consider

Naval Ravikant recommends setting an aspirational hourly rate to help you delegate. For context, as he was building AngelList his ‘rate’ was $5000/hr!

I found this hard to do at first. If you also find this uncomfortable, grab a friend and ask them what your aspirational rate should be. It’s likely that somebody else will see the value in your time more than you see it yourself.

Always re-doing your team’s work? Set your aspirational hourly rate and then imagine invoicing your business every time you step in. This will help identify where you’re losing critical time in your business.

❤️ Content I LOVED

📚 Book - The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber

- If you enjoyed this newsletter, this book is a must-read. The author identifies the three roles every business needs: The Visionary, the Manager and the Technician.

🎥 YouTube - Priming (Daily Habit) by Tony Robbins

- One of Tony Robbins’ core messages is about getting into “state”. When in a negative state we have negative thoughts and when in a positive state, we have positive thoughts (and feel invincible!). I’m going to do this every morning to build the habit. Join me.

📚 Book - Awareness by Anthony de Mello

- I finished this spiritual book in a day and it flipped a lot of my worldviews upside down. If you’re looking for a book that will challenge how you think and live your life, I highly recommend it.

✍️ Quote of the week

That’s a wrap. I hope you found this newsletter valuable.

Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next week!

Joe

P.S. If you’re looking for the list of 50 hooks I shared on LinkedIn, I’ve packaged them up as a free Notion template for you below.