Effective Delegation – Mike Michalowicz
effective delegation
SUMMARY
For a lot of people, especially those who started the business from the ground up, have yet to learn effective delegation. It’s worrisome for some to delegate the tasks since they’re not confident yet that their employees can do the job as they would have done it. However, there are ways to effectively delegate those tasks so that focus is given more to the important role of the business.On this episode, we have Mike Michalowicz. He is the author of Profit First and other popular business books. He is also the entrepreneur behind three multi-million dollar companies.Mike talks about streamlining, creating processes, and minimizing management within the business. He also provides suggestions on how to delegate tasks to employees.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
There are steps that can help elevate the business. One is sales reorganization and profitability. Once a business has sales, and profits are aligned and addressed, the next level up is the freedom of time.To streamline the business, one of the ways is to capture what you are doing using video recording and then provide it to the employees for them to emulate it.The goal is to capture systems and not to create systems.Identifying the QBR or the Queen Bee Role in a business is important. Make sure that everyone in the business knows the QBR because that elevates the entire business and needs to be protected and served.You have to choose what you intend to be known for.Identify the tasks that take you the furthest away from the most important thing, the QBR, and the easiest to transfer and start there.Take a break so you can look at the business at a different perspective.Effective Delegation – Mike Michalowicz
Luis CongdonHey Thriving Launchers, today we’re going to be talking about effective delegation, automation, and letting other people do the things you don’t like to do so you can be happier and more optimized in your work and business life.
Kamala ChambersWe’re here with Mike Michalowicz. He is the entrepreneur behind three multi-million dollar companies and an author.
Luis CongdonAll right, we’re here with Mike. Mike, welcome to the show. Are you ready to launch to talk about effective delegation?
Mike Michalowicz I am ready! Thank you both for having me.
Importance of Effective Delegation For Entrepreneurs
Luis CongdonBefore the show, one of the things you were telling us that you’d be excited to talk about and you felt that it was an important topic for entrepreneurs and people who are in business is effective delegation; learning how to streamline, create processes, and minimize their management of others or get out of that space where you are micromanaging and worrying about what your team is doing.That’s a hard process for a lot of people especially if you built your business from the ground up. What are some of the lessons that you learned along the way or things you could tell us today that might help us take our hands off the reign or to be able to do effective delegation?
How Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs Is Related To Effective Delegation
Mike Michalowicz I was intrigued by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs recently and I think what we are talking about today applies to this.Maslow basically says in the human life endeavor is that we have certain hierarchies of needs, the base being the need for food and water. As you move up the chain, there’s a need to belong to a community, to be loved and to give love and the highest level is self-actualization.As I was looking at that, this is what entrepreneurs go through but in a different flavor. The base I think for every business owner is you need sales reorganization.For your organization to move forward, if you have no sales, you are stuck in the water. That’s the oxygen if you will in a business.
Effective Delegation – Sales And Profitability
Mike Michalowicz The next level up I believe is profitability and to me that is the nourishment that you can make as much sales in the world as you want but if you are not profitable, that’s not sustainable either, you need to be nourished.Quite frankly, some businesses are starving to death because they are not profitable and what they do is they gasp for more air. They try to breathe in more sales ignoring profit. Once a business has sales and profits are aligned and addressed, the next level up is the freedom of time.For the business owner being cumbered by the business but for the business to be the platform for them to experience life to its fullest and the business to do what they want within their own business. That’s what we’re talking about today.
Simpler System For Effective Delegation
Mike Michalowicz We need to develop certain processes and systems to give us that freedom and I now believe, I did a lot of research, I read a book called Clockwork and it says preparing for this. Over six years, I did research and I found out that standard approaches like SOPs, checklist, and stuff very often argued as the foundation for a business and process. It’s rarely effectively executed. I saw that and I think that I found this simpler system for getting those results that we need that don’t require cumbersome documentation.
Kamala ChambersI’d love to hear what that is what you’ve discovered that helps streamline things and achieve effective delegation.
Mike Michalowicz I’ll give you two things to be able to do effective delegation.
Effective Delegation – Capture The Process
Mike Michalowicz One and I’ll jump ahead a little bit, first is capturing the process.When I was interviewing entrepreneurs, I said: “How many systems do you have for your business right now?” Someone will say half of the business is systematized or nothing is systematized or maybe I got seventy or eighty percent nailed down.The reality is we have all of it nailed down is just sitting in our heads.As business owners, if you do everything, everything is in your head. You know the processes. It’s in your head so getting someone else to do is difficult because they can’t read your mind. If your employees, they have in their heads.
Effective Delegation Is Not About Creating Systems
Mike Michalowicz The goal of effective delegation is not to create systems and I think that’s where the fallacy was. The goal is to capture systems and what it is, is simply capture what you are doing and there are ways to do it through video recording.
Effective Delegation – Video Record What You’re Doing
Mike Michalowicz What we are doing now is we are doing a podcast. If I want to teach someone else how to produce a podcast, I could use a screen recorder like Loom or screen cap or something. Have people record what I’m doing and then give it to the next person to emulate so that I can capture that way.I know that in a lot of businesses, the direction is transferred by a statement like “We have a meeting” “Do step 1 2 3”.Just bring your phone and record what you’re doing and now you have a recording of those actions or sometimes it’s actual physical movement – moving boxes or packaging stuff or whatever. Take that same phone and videotape it and this is now your instructions set.
Effective Delegation – Store The Recordings On A Network Directory Structure
Mike Michalowicz Then, store it on a network directory structure that is easy to find what you are looking for. If it’s Accounting, I would click on Admin and go to the Accounting directory and there are the Accounting videos like how to process payroll or how to do collections or something hence the recording.The goal is to capture what you have and there are many tools out there that we can use.The other thing, taking a step back now, is I found that most businesses are trying to systematize everything at once like “We need to fix this” “We need to improve that.” “We need to organize this.”They’re kind of playing a game of whack a mole with their jumping around trying to fix everything.
Effective Delegation – Using The Tradition Formula – Queen Bee Role (QBR)
Mike Michalowicz As I do my research for Clockwork, I found that the organizations that scale the quickest use a traditional formula that I now call the QBR stands for Queen Bee Role.Why I say it’s traditional is it came from an organization that existed even before modern business and what it is, is “Beehives”. I found that “Beehives” are extremely well organized; very efficient use of their “Manpower,” can scale very quickly.How do they do it? Every bee in a beehive knows that the Queen Bee of the beehive is serving the most critical role which is laying eggs. They need eggs to survive. A bee on an average lives six to maybe eight weeks. They need constant egg production.
Effective Delegation – Understand The Role Of The QBR
Mike Michalowicz I’m not saying that that the Queen Bee is the most important bee. That bee is simply serving the most important role which is laying eggs. If the Queen Bee fails to produce, they will remove her and then spawn a new bee.Every bee in the hive knows regardless of what their primary job is; collecting pollen or nectar or whatever. They all know that their first job is to make sure that egg production is happening. They protect that QBR then they go out and do what their primary job function is.I found that every business that is efficient has identified that one thing the businesses hinging its success on, the QBR. Every employee knows makes sure that’s humming along and only one knows for sure that it’s humming along go to the other job. If it’s not, help make it hum along again.
How Effective Delegation Is Practical On Businesses
Mike Michalowicz It just makes this practical on business.For example, if you go to the doctor’s office, maybe the doctor’s reputation for extraordinary service, the QBR is the activity that supports that perception, that brand promise of extraordinary service.Is it the thorough exams? Is it time spent with the patient really diagnosing what’s going on? Well, that’s what it is. The QBR is the doctor’s time with the patient.If anyone in that staff sees that the doctor is pulling files or processing insurance claims or doing anything that’s not about giving extraordinary service and spending time customers, the QBR is failing and every employee needs to block and tackle for the doctor so that she can get back to being with the patients. That’s the other part of this process.
Effective Delegation – Know What Elevates The Business And Protect It
Mike Michalowicz Once you capture systems, identify what the QBR is and make sure that everyone knows that’s the thing that elevates the entire business and needs to be protected and served. That’s how you start effective delegation.
Luis CongdonThat makes a lot of sense and I really like that.One of the things I can hear some entrepreneurs are saying or asking is “I know the thing that is most important that I should be doing, another most important thing in the business that should be happening.”
Effective Delegation – Start Letting Go
Luis CongdonIt’s most likely if you’re listening to this, you are kind of that person in your business that probably holds that space of being the Queen so to speak and the challenge that I find with most people who hold that space, they’re also really good at doing other things to assure that their main thing is protected. It can really be hard to let go.Most people tend to ask “When do I know when it’s a good time to let go?” “How do I let go?” ”How do I know things are going to be okay?” Those are really hard questions to teach people or to answer and give you that comfort necessary so that they can start letting go.
Mike Michalowicz We made a visual around this because that exactly was the challenge we were getting. I and my team was researching this out and what we found is there’s a simple graphic you can implement to give you the visual impact of what’s going on.Basically, here’s how you do effective delegation in short.
Effective Delegation – Start Documenting How Much Time You Spend On Each Thing
Mike Michalowicz My argument is to do you want to be known for your invoicing. Chances are you don’t. You want to be known for the extraordinary service that you provide and my question is if you didn’t do invoicing, could you provide such extraordinary service that customers actually want to pay you in advance? They didn’t care about the invoice. This is so remarkable. This is life changing and the answer is yes by the way.Kickstart every single day and these remarkable innovations coming out and people pay before the process even made so it’s doable. You have to pick what do you intend to be known for. That’s QBR. With all the other stuff you’ve identified, we’re going to put these little arms, pulling us away from the QBR.Here’s how you do effective delegation in execution.
Executing Effective Delegation
Mike Michalowicz On a piece of paper, in the head center put the QBR and circle it, extraordinary service and how do you define it. Then, draw a line representing of the time you spent on other tasks on any given week. You may have spent your two hours a week doing shipments so you make a pry. Then use a line that will represent two hours.Maybe you spent 10 hours a week doing email. That length is five times longer than the two hours then draw a line that is five times longer and have the word “email” at the end.What you will see is you develop a Hobbin Spoke design but a very unbalanced Hobbin Spoke. There are things that are pulling you far away.
Effective Delegation – Delegate What Takes You The Furthest Away From The Most Important Thing
Mike Michalowicz What takes you furthest away from the one thing you’re business needs to be doing, those are the first things you need to delegate.I realized for some I have been very technical in heart, we may have to get a little bit closer to the QBR things that don’t distract you as much are easier to transfer. Identify the things that take you the furthest away from the most important thing the QBR and the easiest to transfer and start there.Every business, I don’t care if you’re a one-person operation or one hundred or somewhere in between, the critical players, the owners, the C-suite, those people are inevitably doing way too much distractive work and we can start transferring it out immediately.
Effective Delegation – Hire A VA
Mike Michalowicz You can use a virtual assistant if you’re small. You can hire another employee if you’re big but there’s always a way to start delegating this workout and the time it freezes up, it goes back to being devoted to the QBR, the most critical thing and that again will elevate your entire business.
Kamala ChambersBefore we sign off, what is the number one tip that you would give the Thriving Launchers to go out and do today with regards to effective delegation?
Mike Michalowicz This is the most radical tip. It’s radical because I found the ultimate test. Take a four-week vacation from your business. I know as I say that people will be like “This guy is insane like are you kidding me?” Here’s the deal, most entrepreneurs, I studied seventy-five cases very deeply but spoke with thousands of entrepreneurs over the years about how they leverage their time.
Effective Delegation – Take A Four-Week Vacation
Mike Michalowicz Most entrepreneurs take a very little vacation or they take what they call workcation which is not a vacation. Others would do one week vacation but they’re not free of their business at this point. A one week vacation most people will work as hard as they can leading up to it and then hopefully it will bridge them for when they return and they can catch up with work again.When you commit to a four-week vacation, I’m not saying to take it tomorrow. I’m saying to schedule it a year or a year and a half from now. Once you schedule for a four-week vacation, your perspective on your business changes.
Effective Delegation – Design Your Business To Run Itself
Mike Michalowicz You need to design your business to run itself. In four weeks, your business will experience every element of business from hiring people to firing people, to invoicing to collecting to getting new prospects to getting rid of the customers. You will experience everything and your business needs to navigate on its own.If you can remove yourself from your business for four weeks, your business can run itself and now you can do what you want both in your life and within your business. Again, commit to a four-week vacation. Pick a year or maybe even two years out. Now start working making that a reality. That is a game changer in your business in making it run itself.
Do Effective Delegation To Be The Queen Of Your Business
Luis CongdonAll right Thriving Launchers, we’ve been here talking about how to let go of the reigns in your business so you can I guess take hold of the reigns in a different way or be the Queen of your business and automate, do effective delegate and have increased freedom and relaxation while you operate and run your business.If you want to learn more about effective delegation, we’ll see you on the website. We’ll have some notes. We’ll have some cheat sheets or link back to Mike’s website and we’ll see you on the next episode Thriving Launchers.
