When to Delegate

Niel Malan - Business Coach

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Full Transcript

[The following is the full transcript of this Vlog: “When to delegate”

NIEL MALAN: Hey everybody, Niel Malan here. South Africa’s number one business coach. Welcome to this week’s video blog where I’m going to talk about a really important question. What should I delegate and what should I not? Last week I spoke about a really powerful principle called Three to Thrive and if you haven’t watched that video yet I’m really going to encourage you to go back and go and watch it because I share in that video one of the most powerful productivity principals I’ve ever come across. Now to add to that, entrepreneurs approach me all the time and they call me on a paradox. One of the skills I teach is Facebook marketing and entrepreneurs approach me all the time and say Niel, hold on a minute. On the one hand you teaching me to delegate all the things that don’t fit into my three circles, yet you’re teaching me new skills that seem very operational, they seem very tactical. How do you reconcile the two?

I said well you know in business you have to understand what it is that you can delegate and what it is that you personally either have to do or you have to keep a very close eye on and I find that the answer to this question is not really intuitive, yet understanding what you should delegate and what you shouldn’t really puts you in a position of power because it helps you to focus and it helps you empower your team. It helps you to recruit smartly and it helps you to run your day more effectively and more productively. So there are no right and wrong answers here, your business will change and continue to evolve all the time and depending on where you are in your business the answer is going to differ. I would say if someone had to say to me Niel across the board small business owners the bulk of small business owners if you had to pick generically five things that small business owners should do themselves that they are responsible for more than anyone else in their team that either they should do entirely or if they don’t do it entirely they should oversee it. They should project manage that function. What would those five be and here’s my answer. The first is vision. This is beyond a shadow of a doubt the most important aspect, a business without a vision cannot flourish, a business without a vision has no direction, a business without a vision has no inspiration and a business without a vision has no leader. A leader cannot lead unless they’re leading people somewhere and there’s nobody in your team if you’re the entrepreneur the owner of your business there’s nobody in your team that could or should lead your team and should create the vision. So this is a part of an entrepreneur’s life is you’re constantly want to craft out that vision, you constantly want to refine it and you constantly want to not only do that is you want to educate your team on it. You want to get your team on fire you know. IBM the founder of IBM Thomas Watson, he once said every business needs a religion. Now he didn’t mean religion in the religious sense. He means every business needs something to stand for you know. Every business needs an ethos and I spoke about this in the power of mission in some of my earlier blog posts. Check it out. So that’s your first one is having a vision. Communicating and getting everybody inspired about your vision. The second one I would say is innovation and this is not an intuitive one but I find that the world is evolving so rapidly you know ten years ago half of your competitors you’re competing with right now didn’t even exist and you know what most of the competitors you have today are not even on your doorstep anymore. It’s global. So I find that consumer expectations are different, terminology is evolving things are constantly changing and innovation is becoming increasingly important for small business owners in fact for all businesses. We see large companies going bust because they never innovated. We see small businesses become massive businesses quick because they innovated. And I believe it’s the primary responsibility of the entrepreneur to innovate. Steve Jobs, what did he spend most of his time on? Innovation you know. He understood consumer trends. He understood consumer demands and he was a fanatic making sure they developed the world’s best products. Now whether you believe that he’s got the world’s best products or not is immaterial. The market believes they do because they’ve got the highest market cap and he spent most of his time on innovation right and if you look at many many organisations that’s what they do. Bill Gates you know became one of the wealthiest people in the world. He appointed a CEO that’s his twenty-third employee was a guy called Steve Barner he’s still with that organisation. In fact I think he’s retired recently because Bill Gates didn’t want to manage the business.

He wanted to innovate. He wanted to build the best products. Now again let’s not get into the debate whether those are the best products or not because that’s controversial. He’s the second or third richest person in the world so he’s not doing too badly. That’s innovation. Number three, team. You want to spend a good deal time building team you know you need to make sure that your hire exceptional people. You don’t want to leave this to chance you know. Often entrepreneurs they wing it you know. Who likes interviewing? Who likes going through a pile of CV’s? For heaven’s sake nobody enjoys that you know unless you’re weird. But right now you’re the key person that’s going to attract talent into your business. You need to go out. You need to network. You need to go and find talent. You need to go and find that raw talent that fits into your culture, that’s going to create the kind of business that you are looking for you know. You are primarily tasked with that because you understand the vision for your own business you know. Does it mean that your team members don’t get involved? Absolutely not of course they do you know but your jobs still recruit. Your job is to then coach to make sure that the people have the skills and abilities that you need them to have and then finally your job is to build an amazing culture that’s going to execute your vision. Number four, marketing. I believe that it’s so hard to come across good marketers that you can afford to pay, listen you find great ad agencies. You find fantastic internet marketing agencies. Can a small business owner afford them? Very unlikely. Marketing people make a fortune if they’re good. Small business owners can’t afford them. What does that mean? You become good at marketing right. You are the person that wants to learn ,that wants to invest, that wants to study, develop outstanding marketing campaigns. Be aggressive about it and then build a team to take over from you but it starts with you and you always oversee it. You’ve got to know your numbers. How many leads? What’s your average sales value? What is your customer retention value? What are my sales targets for the day, for the week, for the month? Did I achieve that? What are my margins? You need to have those numbers. You need to have outstanding marketing campaigns and last but not least, you need to keep a really close eye on the legal and the financial. Does it mean you do the bookkeeping? No. Does it mean you’re trying to become a legal expert? No. Does it mean you understand every single contract that you sign? Yes. Do you understand the legal ramifications of every big move that you make? Yes. Does it mean that you get a monthly management account from your accountants? Absa- damn-lutely! Does it mean you understand your financial controls in your own business? Of course who else is the person more responsible than you for the financial outcomes of your business?

It’s you my friend but you need a team to do that. So that would be my answer to you what should I delegate that’s my generic answer, what should I not delegate those are the five things and sorry I forgot to preface that. My preface that I forgot was to say it’s easier to answer what not to delegate than what it is what to delegate so apologies for that. So let me do a quick recap number one vision, number two innovation, number three team, number four marketing, number five legal and financial controls everything else delegate. Get other people that are more qualified, more excited, more enthuses, got more energy than you and you will build your empire. I hope you enjoyed this video. Please comment below, please share it and please go and do something, don’t let this just be information. I love doing these videos and I love spending some time with you. Until next week where I’m going to share with you some really important insights regarding technology. Remember work hard, live fully, love openly and try something new today. I’ll see you in the next one.