Delegate to Elevate

Through our facilitation and brand strategy work, I’ve had the opportunity to work with business leaders representing a range of sectors across North America. But when I’ve asked them the one thing they’d want from their business, the answer is always the same: time.

Many have created promising brands. They’ve recruited a team they’re proud of. But they still find themselves spinning their wheels trying to get out of the day-to-day and focus on the activities that will take their business to the next level.

The idea of owning a business does not appeal to everyone—but everyone does need to feel like they own aspects of the company. A self-managed business has an organizational chart that establishes the roles required to achieve your goals and the behaviours expected of the people who fill those roles.

One of the pillars of a self-managed business is the ability to work in our sweet spot—the activities that drive the highest value and derive the highest return.

Over the years, we’ve used Unique Ability finder by Strategic Coach and the Love or Loathe tool by Scaling Up to help clients identify what areas of the business they should focus on and which ones they should shed and delegate to others.

More recently, we adopted the Sweetspot method developed by Andrew Clayton to help teams determine the individual activities they should focus on to optimize their collective performance. After spending just 20 minutes on the Sweetspot exercise, one client freed up five full days from his monthly schedule—resulting in a 10,000% return on investment.

By identifying what activities you can delegate, you can focus on those activities where you feel energized, engaged, and are generating the most significant benefit to the business overall. As leaders, becoming a coach for Sweetspot conversations with your team is key to ensuring all employees are optimizing their time.