As a leader or business owner, one of your biggest responsibilities is to make sure all the important tasks are taken care of. However, this can be difficult when you have too much on your plate and not enough hours in the day.
We understand that feeling – which is why we created a simple system for deciding what stays on your plate and what can be delegated to a trusted executive assistant.
Why Delegation Is Important
Delegation is the key to success for business owners because it allows them to focus on what matters most.
Every CEO has what we call a Zone of Genius. This is the area of your work that fills you up. Your Genius Zone is the work that you feel passionate about, that ONLY you can do.
But, when you have too many tasks outside of your Genius Zone, you don’t have time for the work that fills you up. You feel burnt out and stuck in the weeds of your business.
We tell leaders all the time: Work does not need to be done by you in order to be done well.
Wouldn’t you rather delegate your “non-genius” activities to a person who has that work in their Zone of Genius?
How to Decide What to Delegate
In order to delegate effectively, you need to know what ONLY you can do. In theory, everything else can and should be delegated.
Here’s how you decide.
1. Open a Google Doc or grab a piece of paper and take inventory of everything you do in a standard work day. Be as exhaustive as you can. No task is too small to write down.
2. Give each task a grade of either “E” for excellent, “C” for competent, or “I” for incompetent. Excellent work falls into your Zone of Genius. These are activities that excite you, fill you up, and that require your voice or your face.
An example of an Excellent task could be hosting a webinar, or conducting a sales call.
You will grade an activity as Competent if it is work you are capable of doing — that you may even be good at — but that you don’t have time for. Think about things like managing your calendar, email management, appointment setting and travel management.
Finally, grade work as Incompetent if it is something you don’t know how to do, don’t have time to do, or don’t like doing. This could be accounting, funnel creation, creating landing pages and so on.
3. Once you have given every item a grade, you have your starting point for deciding what you should delegate to a trusted executive assistant.
Ideally, every item graded C or I should be outsourced. You don’t have to outsource everything all at one time, however. In fact, we recommend starting with one to two priorities, like email management or calendar management.
This allows your EA time to build confidence and competence before you add to their workload.