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Delegation is difficult - and especially so for small business owners. It can be hard to trust anyone with a role in managing your big idea, yet, as Forbes outlines, delegation is on the path to finding success. Moving responsibilities away to people with the capability to manage them will ensure that you can put time in where it matters - innovation, growth, and the overall vision of your company and where it needs to be moving. Delegating effectively, however, can be difficult to get right. Moving work away requires hiring professionals with the right set of skills and the same will to succeed as your business.

The freelance revolution

The good news is that there are plenty of high-quality workers out there. 2021 has been the year of the great resignation, NPR highlighting the millions of individuals who have quit their job to strike out on their own. This has flooded the work market with countless professionals with the right skills. The challenge for business leaders is finding the person with the right attitude to match. Before you look into hiring a freelancer or outsourcing, you should think about what questions you’ll ask. The freelancer needs to understand your vision and be on board with what you’re trying to achieve. They should be able to work to your schedules, and deliver work and feedback at a time suitable for you. Most importantly, they should be agreeable and excited to work with you and your company.

Long-term planning

Getting individual pieces of work done by freelancers is straightforward. What about long-term goals? The Harvard Business School recommends starting the delegation process with a clear target in mind. It’s OK to offload work if you’re short on time or resources, but a brilliant leader will think about how that situation came about and how they might prevent emergencies in the future. A clearly defined goal as to how your work will be completed and how your workforce will be represented achieves that.

Avoiding the pitfalls

The Harvard Business Review advocates for one key area in delegation - becoming comfortable with saying “yes”, “no”, and “yes, if”. The purpose of delegation is to reduce the burden of tasks on your shoulders. You are trying to do away with time-consuming bureaucracy and non-value-demand, while also minimizing the rate of failure demand being placed on your business. Retaining oversight is key; you need to avoid handing over the strategic vision of your company, and your processes, to outsourcers or freelancers. However, once you have put into clear writing the processes being moved away, it’s important to take your hands off the process and let it run. Using analytics to observe the amount of demand on your business can come at a later date; have faith in your methods until then.

Retaining control while reducing your overheads in terms of time is the focus of delegation. A wise business owner knows when they can take responsibilities away, giving themselves more time to innovate - and grow.