Today's question was asked by a client of mine, Lyle Yablonsky, Vice President at Axa Advisors. Thanks, Lyle!
"Ingar, you've always told me to think strategic, but it's not always easy. I'm struggling to get out of the "weeds" and turn my recruiting and training responsibilities over to my staff. How in the world can I break away?"
That's a great question, Lyle, and also a problem with which most business leaders struggle. I wrote about this in the Washington Business Journal, and I'll flesh out some of the points here:
1) Delegation works only if employees know where the business is going and why. Your documented processes are not going to cover everything, so your vision (NOT your vision statement, per se) is what will guide their decision making in lieu of documented processes.
2) It follows from point 1 above that you should have documented processes, or an operations manual. If you do, then all the work that your staff needs to do for recruiting and training should be well defined. So, get out of the way of your staff and don’t meddle in their work. Instead manage by results. You should have clear metrics defined that demonstrate how effectively your staff are completing the training and recruiting tasks. If not, then this may be a reason that you have not been able to distance yourself. DON'T DO WHAT OTHERS ARE QUITE CAPABLE OF DOING FOR THEMSELVES.
3) What are the incentives for your staff? Are the incentives right? Are they incentivized to allow you to keep doing the training and recruiting while they go out and develop new clients? Take a moment to consider this; if the upside is with client development, unless you shift the incentives, they'll never be motivated to train and recruit. Have you found the right staff people to do recruiting and training? In other words, have your found the staff members who actually want to grow their own teams? Is this important enough to you that you are willing to spend your own money on this?
4) What are your own incentives for breaking away? Do you understand how much money you are leaving on the table by doing the work others are doing? Are you willing to allow them to do the work 70% as well as you? 80%? What's your own level of pain; what impact is this causing on your personal life and your personal income?
I hope that little primer on delegation helps, Lyle. Thanks for the great question!
GrowStrong!
Coach Grev
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