“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”
– Jessica Jackley
Delegating has nothing to do with how you think but has everything to do with how you feel. Most leaders are attached to an old-school way of thinking called time-management thinking, that is focused on what you do today rather than how it will affect you in the future. In order to adapt to today’s fast-paced world, the best and most effective leaders have shifted to something called “The 30x Rule”.
What is the 30x Rule?
The 30x Rule from Rory Vaden dictates that you, as the leader in your business, should spend 30x the amount of time training someone to do a specific task—exactly as though you were doing it yourself. For example, if a certain process takes you 10 minutes to complete, then you should be able to comfortably train someone for 300 minutes to complete that process, as the 30x rule suggests.
You’re probably thinking, “Why would I spend FIVE HOURS training someone to do something I can complete in 10 minutes?!?” You should not get stuck focusing on what this time will cost you in one day—rather, think about what this will mean for you in the long run. By taking this time to train someone to do this task, you are saving yourself more than five hours in the future. You are delegating this task, ensuring that it will be done well and giving yourself MORE TIME to focus on other aspects of your business that only YOU can do.
Let’s look at the numbers: let’s say you need to take 10 minutes per day doing this specific task and there are 250 working days in a year, that’s 2500 minutes in the year (10 minutes x 250 days = 2500 minutes) that you spend working on that task! That’s over 45 hours a year! So spending 5 hours to train someone to do this task is worth your time. If you divide 300 (the time you’ll spend training) into 2,200 (the time you saved delegating this task), you are getting a Return on Time Invested (ROTI) of 733%!
Now, imagine if you did this with other tasks as well. How much time would you be saving? How much more would you be able to do? How many phone calls or meetings could you have when you have delegated all these “little” important tasks to other people on your team?
We know what you’re thinking. “But nobody else can do these things as well as I can.” You need to shift from this limiting belief. You need to recognize that by delegating these tasks, you’re not only freeing-up time for yourself, but you are empowering someone else in your team to step up and become a leader as well.
So now, how do you determine which tasks to delegate? At MyOutDesk, we have this awesome exercise called the sticky challenge. Basically, you take a sticky note and list down everything you do in one day and how long it takes to do it. After some time of collecting these sticky notes, go through them and look at each task. Figure out which ones are revenue producing and which aren’t. Chances are, those that are not revenue productive are the ones that you can delegate. You can read more about the sticky challenge HERE.
We know delegating isn’t easy, especially when it comes to your business. However, as your business grows, you need to be sure that you are utilizing your time and focusing on what you need to, without getting bogged down by everything else. The best business owners (referred to as Multipliers in the 30x Rule) have come to realize that 70% done by someone else is always better than 100% done by themselves.
Remember, a leader develops other leaders and not simply followers.
If you want more information about MyOutDesk , visit our website here.