There’s ONE crucial tool to use BEFORE you delegate ANYTHING. Knowing what and how to delegate makes all the difference in the world. You risk big mistakes with clients or guests if you delegate the wrong things. This is about what to delegate and when. 

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This is a series for business owners with employees, staff, a team. Delegating is the joy and pleasure of off-loading tasks so you, the MVP, The Most Valuable Player, can work ON the business instead of working IN the business.

Here’s the "Adventures in Delegating” series line-up:

1. Delegating: Do you own a business or a job?
2. What to Delegate and When
3. Hugh’s Monumental Delegating FAILS
4. Battling the Monkey
5. Delegating for the Long Haul: Your system for multiplying effort

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What to delegate. Three categories of tasks and responsibilities for you to explore and test delegating, BUT BEFORE you delegate anything…

Automate. Anything you can automate, you need to automate using machines, computers, and software. The reason is that you seldom have to put anything you can off-load to automation back on your to-do list even if there is set-up time and monetary cost.

Example: Adding up hours on a hand-punched time card with a calculator is a RIDICULOUS waste of your time! I don’t know how many brilliant farm operators, men and women, spend 1-3 hours doing this each week. It drives me batty because these are the same people complaining about not having enough time. 

Solution: Get a time clock that does the math for you. We bought a facial recognition time clock for $419.00 from [CLICK HERE] https://www.alliedtime.com/Time-Clocks-Lathem-FaceIn-FR650-Biometric-p/lathem-fr650-kit.htm?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIp-7c-d241QIVEINpCh2dWAt2EAAYBCAAEgLWuvD_BwE

NO Time cards. NO Buddy punches. NO weekly math. It prints a report, and you are DONE. 

Other things to automate:

Employee scheduling - WhenToWork.com, WhenIWork.com, Zoomshift.com

Payroll & Taxes - We use Quickbooks Online, including the payroll module, and pay taxes electronically. Also, hire a payroll service for October or for the year. You send the hours report, and they cut the checks and pay the taxes.

Social media posting. Hootsuite.com for Facebook & Twitter, automate and pre-schedule a week or month at a time.

What to delegate: 

Repetitive tasks - If you are doing the same thing repeatedly, you should likely hand it off. Weeding, mowing, stocking, payroll (yes, payroll!), Opening, Closing, Cleaning and more. These are the easiest to hand off because they are the easiest to train and follow up on because they are binary outcomes: They are right or not - black or white.

Examples:

We use a sequence of Opening and Closing Checklists to ensure the Fun Park is ready daily. If something isn’t ready, it’s easy to find out who didn’t get it ready and coach them using the list. (This system of lists is INCLUDED with Agritourism Manager Boot Camp)

We use a printed satellite photo of our farm and park to hand to the weedwhacker operator, with each area highlighted and color-coded by string trim or poly-cut blades. It makes it easy to confirm what’s done and what’s left to do and train new employees. Why? I got darn tired of verbally explaining every building, fence, septic lid, and attraction around which to weed wack!

Seaquist Orchards has a beautifully stocked farm market. The displays were brilliant! Their merchandisers would apply their brilliance to create an excellent product set-up, take a picture, laminate it, and store it under the display with the items to restock. Refilling the display correctly was as easy as matching the picture. It is equally easy to train and double-check that the work was done right. Does the display look like the picture? Then it’s right!

How to delegate repetitive tasks:

1. Do the task yourself and catalog each step and decision.
2. Write down the steps, add diagrams and pictures, mark tools, and post troubleshooting guides to make it easy to follow your prescribed process.
3. Train your best people first, using the checklists and pictures you’ve written down.
4. Watch them train someone else further down the line.
5. You now have a task you should NEVER have to re-do, maybe re-train, but NEVER do again.

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Goal-oriented thought works with repeatable actions. This category requires more training and guidelines for staff to execute correctly, but it yields a massive jump in productivity. These are items you need to apply SOME of your brilliance, your owner-mindset, then delegate to the staff with a clear eye on the goal, not every detail. 

Facebook posts - Surprise! I haven’t made more than 5% of our Facebook posts in the last year and a half. To delegate this, it takes time, coaching, check-ins, and a clear description of the ‘voice of our individual businesses’ to allow our staff to post for us successfully. I had to think of the formula - Throwback Thursdays, Recipe Tuesdays, Wednesday event reminders, Friday Rah-Rah, sales posts, Monday Thank You, etc.- to clarify the posts that would successfully fill our News Feed. This alone doesn’t mean the work is done. Janelle and I will often take a few minutes to create a focus for the following week or two. Michelle will proof event listings and details, but then we can turn it over to Janelle to complete the mission without me looking over her shoulder. 

Event planning - To automate some of the event planning tasks, we’re building a template we fill out as best we can with the requirements for any event. What’s the theme, do we need music, do we need food vendors, what’s the timeline, online ticketing, marketing schedule, staffing requirements, etc. As we improve this season, we’re making changes to and adding to the template so we can have a meeting and then go launch an event. The key is that we no longer have to rethink the event process. We are just following the template to success. We add brilliance during the initial set-up meetings, and then we can all do our work to make it happen.

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Less than your 'highest & best use.’ This last set of tasks is one of the tough ones. To do this correctly, you must first determine, and therefore place a value on, your ‘best and highest use’ in the operation. 

Think of it another way: “If you are doing something that could be done by a minimum wage worker, you are stealing from the company.”

Harsh words, but true. If you could hire someone to mow the grass for minimum wage, get off the mower. If you could hire someone to make ribbon fries in the snack shack for $9.00/hr, get out of the shack. 

The deep struggle is that we find it hard to place an appropriate dollar value on ourselves - often, we think of our labor as FREE! - when we are actually incredibly valuable because our essential work, our deep thinking, and our insights are what keep the whole business afloat. 

What is your highest and best use? My dad is growing stuff, operations, and efficiency. Mine is new ideas, marketing, and team management. Matt is keeping the team functioning together, tempering my enthusiasm, and improving the quality of the raw gush of ideas out of my brain. Michelle’s is nitty-gritty details, caring about clients' & guests' feelings, then hosting the party when guests arrive. Jenny is maniacal in list-checking and ensuring things get done. So, what is your highest and best use?

There are things you simply cannot and should not delegate! Those things take your special kind of magic, your incredible value.