Delegation is a sequence

One of the things I hear most from owners is that they've tried to delegate and it didn't work. Someone dropped the ball, something fell through, and now the owner is convinced they just have to stay involved in everything.

What I usually find when I dig into it is that the delegation didn't fail because of the new hire. It failed because the owner tried to hand off too much too soon, without a clear order to it.

Here's the sequence that works:

Admin goes first. It has the lowest barrier to entry and the fastest ramp time. Someone can step in, learn the process, and take it off your plate without disrupting the money making work. After that, logistics like designs and material orders.

You are still estimating and running projects, but you are no longer the person tracking every delivery and coordinating every order.

Project management comes next. This is where a lot of owners feel nervous, but by this point you have already seen what your team can handle. And the key is that you are still doing estimates. Which means you are still setting the scope, the expectation, the vision for every job before anyone shows up. Your team knows what you want without you being there for every conversation.

Estimating is typically the last thing to go. It might move to a project manager, a dedicated estimator, or stay with you for a while.

If you are somewhere in the middle of this and not sure what to hand off next, that is exactly the kind of thing we work through in a Business Audit.