America’s Leadership Expert : Amazing Help

Clay Staires: This is Clay Staires America’s Leadership Expert with Tulsa Business Leadership with podcast number 42. Today we’re talking about how to break free from your company. Yeah, what I’m talking about here is how to never delegate a task again. It’s going to be a very interesting concept here at the Leadership Initiative. I’ve been talking with my clients this past week, entrepreneurs, with the Tulsa Business Leadership and what we’ve been talking about, some things that have come up is this whole process of leaders getting trapped in the details, leaders getting trapped and pulled down into the weeds of their business.

What we begin doing then is just starting to delegate the tasks all day long. Do this. Do this. Do this, and we find too often, okay, you can’t do that. Move out of the way. Let me do it. What I want to get into today with Tulsa Business Leadership is I want to talk about this path. I want to talk about six different areas, six different arenas in your company that you need to build, that you need to equip, so that you never have to delegate a task again.

This first area is … Okay. We’re going to stop here for a second. The first area that I want to talk about is … No, I’m not going to go there. Let me save these first six in order first of all. We start out with the why. You may have heard Simon Sinek’s video on YouTube Start with the Why. He also has a book of the same title, very good book, great video that has been incredibly influential in my life, but what we’re doing here in the why category, if you can imagine just across the top of your page, if you’re taking notes, we want to write these six words and have the six columns.

The first one to the far left is going to be why with a question mark. Then the next column as we move from left to right across your page, the next one is going to be the where and when? The next column as we move to the right is the who. The next column is how. The next column is what and the final column on the far right, the sixth column, is called the what about. Okay?

Now let’s come over to the left. America’s Leadership Expert The why, here’s where we are as a business owner, as a business leader, with Tulsa Business Leadership. What we want to make sure we do is identify our core focus and our core values for the company. Why are we starting this thing? Why are we in business? If you’re at the very beginning of your company then you can start this thing from the ground level. If you’ve been up and going for 30 years then you kind of have to come in and you may need to reinvent some things or re-identify your company. Why are we in business?

I’ve had a number of clients that I’ve worked with recently that started their company years ago and when they started their company their primary goal was to make money because at that point that was the pressure. America’s Leadership Expert We had to make money. But along the road as they grew their business into successful multimillion dollar companies they never did go back and revisit their why and so now, even after being in business for 18, 27, and 33 years, they were still primarily motivated by we’ve got to make money. They hadn’t tapped into the core focus.

The core focus includes your mission. It includes your vision. It’s your niche, the specific group that you are going after. It’s why you are in business. What are the core characteristics, the core beliefs in your company that you want to make sure as you design your culture? What are the core beliefs and the core attitudes and characteristics in the people that you want to be surrounded by every day? America’s Leadership Expert  It’s important for us to write those things down. This why for you will create purpose. Without this backdrop of why then our business has no context, so we need to be sure to identify the why. This will create purpose.

As we come to our next category we come to the where and when. This is your goal. This is where you’re wanting to end up. It’s the end product. It’s the result of your work. This could be, and if you add in the when it could be in this next year. It could be the next quarter. It could be the next three, five, 10 years. Obviously if we push way out there to 10 years who knows what the future will hold that far out, but as we tile that thing back into each year, each quarter, and even each month, week, and day we can gain more and more control.

The idea here again is where do we want to end up? A lot of times this doesn’t necessarily have a ton to do with money but it’s a position, it’s a place where we’re living. I’ve got a client right now that their big goal is, “Clay we want to be on the beach in California in three years.” Wow. Okay. There we go. That means that we’ve got to put some things together so you can leave your company, which is exactly what we’re talking about in this podcast, with Clay Staires  America’s Leadership Expert Tulsa Business Leadership, is how to be break free from your company so you don’t have to be there every single day.

At Clay Staires America’s Leadership Expert Tulsa Business Leadership we talk about the why, the where, the when. This next category, or the where and the when, this will identify and this will create purpose for you. It will actually give you the engine to drive on a daily basis. The reason why we’re doing this is because we’ve got to get to this place by this time.

The next category that we get to is the who. This is, again, this is in a sequential pattern here. It’s important that we start with the why, then move to the where and the when, and then next of all we hit the who. This is who are the people, what are the responsibilities that are going to be involved in your company? If you’re not careful, and we’ve talked about this with our discussion about the organizational chart, if we’re not careful we’ll put together an organizational chart just based around the people that we have. If we have three people our organizational chart will have three boxes. If we have 30 people it’ll have 30 boxes and so on, as opposed to having an organizational chart, the way that I say the words is, it’s a responsibility chart.

Now, I have multiple responsibilities and I want to put that into the chart so it starts with a CEO and then below that there are three primary divisions, or three primary VPs that are in place. One, to make sure that we’re getting business into the company from our marketing and sales. The middle pillar is once business comes in how are we going to fulfill orders, fulfill service? How are we going to keep customers, maintain the facility? Then finally over on the far right in our responsibility chart there’s got to be support. There’s got to be a way that we support the bringing in the business and keeping the business. We have to support that by making sure we have the right people, making sure we have the money, making sure we have the office organization and so on. That is our organization or our admin, the VP of admin on the far right.

Then it breaks down from there into multiple different boxes. America’s Leadership Expert Each box has a responsibility in it, so again, once you include this, even me with one of my companies, I just have two employees but the thing is is the responsibility chart that I have is 34 boxes, so you can imagine that my name is in several of those boxes. I even have my assistant in a number of those boxes as well so what are the responsibilities?

Once we have these boxes and we see all of these different responsibilities and how they fit together this will create confidence as you move forward. We have the right people and the right spots. We have identified the responsibilities on the front end as we move forward. It also helps you identify if there are any employees that you may say this is a red employee, or someone that needs to be on off ramp, as opposed to our green employees. These are the ones that are doing a great job and actually producing.

It also lets you identify the holes. Yeah, you do have Fred in a box but man, he’s not doing a very good job. It would be much better if we could get him out of that box and get somebody else in there. It also lets you know, if you have this responsibility chart, it lets you know where your bottlenecks are, why things are breaking down in a certain area because you have a certain person that’s overloaded or you have somebody in the wrong box. Once again the who category will create confidence for you.

Then we move to the how category and this is very, very important. This is one we’re going to spend time with because it’s this category that actually allows you to break free from your company. This is where you design your systems. This is where you design how you are going to do the work, how you are going to deliver the service, how you are going to make the product on a consistent basis. If we’re not careful we will put the weight of responsibility on the backs of people rather than on the backs of processes. When we do that then we become almost, it’s almost like you become a hostage to the people because they are the ones that know everything and if that person leaves it’s going to put the business in a very difficult position.

We want to be very careful here, not that we don’t want to have good people, but we want to make sure that as I’m working with leaders through Tulsa Business Leadership, I’m wanting to help them put together systems and processes so they are not so reliant on just the right person. This piece right here, this how, if we can fulfill this how, this is the piece that creates freedom in your company.

The next one as we move toward the right is the what.  America’s Leadership Expert The what, this is where your tasks are. This is actually what you are going to do. It’s what you’re producing, the actual daily tasks, the things that need to get done from cleaning the bathroom to taking the order, fulfilling the order, talking to the client, sales, scripts. It’s all the what. It’s the marketing pieces, when we’re going to do these things. It’s all around the task and these tasks are all identified as things that we will do to create the desired result.

Again, what will happen so often, what I see happen all the time, is business owners and leaders, that I talk with through Tulsa Business Leadership, is that they get trapped in the what. They get trapped in this place of only focusing on what needs to be done today, the tasks that need to be done. Then what we do is we begin to delegate tasks. We begin to say, “I need you to go this. I need you to do this. I need you to send an email to this person. Call that person. I want you to create this for me.”

Then those people go and do those tasks but invariably I find with leaders, through Tulsa Business Leadership, they come back to me and say, “They just don’t do what I ask them to do. Clay, I can’t delegate because they don’t do what I ask them to do.” This is the trick. America’s Leadership Expert We have delegated a task but we haven’t delegated a system. We’ve told them what to do but we haven’t told them how to do it. We have focused on the what and not on the how.

Now with the what you can build a company of 18 years, 27 years, and 33 years. You can build a company that makes money. You can get movement. You can grow your company but you will never get free if you focus on the what. This is that whole thing of how do I stop delegating tasks to people? Well, the way you do it is you begin to put systems. I no longer delegate tasks, I delegate systems to people.

Then our final category over on the far right is the what about category. This is just where we’re taking care of issues. We’re troubleshooting. This is ongoing every single day where we’re trying to do certain things, they’re not working, so we’re adjusting. We’re being flexible. We’re honing and pruning our processes. These are overcoming issues and hurdles. It’s making changes and what this category does is it creates efficiency for us.

Imagine having, as I talk, as Clay Staires America’s Leadership Expert Tulsa Business Leadership and I’m talking with leaders, imagine this in your company, a company that has purpose, a company that has focus, a company that has confidence, a company that has freedom, a company that is moving forward and a company that is efficient. Does this sound like a company that you would love to be the head of? Does it sound like a company that you would like to be a part of? I can imagine if you started this company that’s probably the picture you got was a company that had purpose, focus, confidence, freedom, movement, and efficiency.

I just want the point you, as Clay Staires  America’s Leadership Expert with Tulsa Business Leadership, I want to encourage you that this is the path that you need to follow to create a business that will work, grow, and function without you. This is how you never delegate a task again. This is how to break free from your company. This is Clay Staires with Tulsa Business Leadership with podcast number 42, Never Delegate a Task Again.

Clay Staires