5 Delegation Mistakes That Can Kill A Startup
You can’t do everything yourself.
One of the things you need to learn early enough in business is how to delegate. Not just how to hand over the work, but how to effectively delegate.
Delegation can grow if you delegate to the wrong person and in the wrong way.
Lots of startups have had to face several issues because they delegated wrongly, and it has jeopardized their business rather than helped it.
As a leader, one of the things you need to learn to do is to distribute work for useful closures. Delegation would save you a lot of stress and help you be more productive in more ways for your business. It also helps your subordinates grow and help you tap into the creative abilities of your team.
According to a study, 53% of business owners believe that they can grow their business by more than 20% if they delegate 10% of their workload to someone else.
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Here are 5 Delegation mistakes every startup founder needs to avoid:
Not Defining What Success Means: If you don’t define what success means for yourself and for your subordinates, how would they know when they have achieved the right goals? You should clearly state what a successful outcome should be like and feel like concerning the project at hand. Closely related to this is also setting realistic and clear deadlines for your team.
No monitoring systems in place: Don’t just delegate, you need also to place some monitoring systems so as to know when things aren’t going as expected. This alert both you and your subordinates on the look of things at the moment. Take out time to schedule reviews and feedbacks in order to foster accountability and progress.
Micromanaging: Just as it isn’t cool to not out monitoring and evaluation systems in place for the tasks you delegate; you shouldn’t also micromanage. It is important to give people space to carry out the task in their own way and how creatively they want to do it so far as it doesn’t go beyond your brand guidelines. If you think they are capable enough to carry out the task, then you should give them the opportunity to carry the job out to the best of their abilities. You should have confidence in the person you are delegating the task to. Having faith in them also gives them the assurance that you trust their judgment and you know they are good at what they do. Being a control freak would hurt your brand and your startup, focus on the things you do best and allow your team to do what they do best.
Not delegating the task to the right person: Carefully pair the right person for the right job. This would help you get things done on time and get them done rightly. Study the strengths and weaknesses of your subordinates and find out those who would be fit for the tasks you need to delegate.
Not being flexible: You might think the best way to carry out a task is a certain kind of way and your subordinate who may have a lot of experience or be greatly skilled in that area may have a different idea. Don’t be too rigid; be flexible, be willing to hear from others and adjust things accordingly. You don’t know it all, and you can’t simply do it all.
What are some of the delegation mistakes startup founders make? We would love to hear from you below, do drop your comments.
