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This week Lindy from eVRgreenstudio, a young and inspiring biodiversity hero, wrote me on Linkedin that she currently struggles to figure out how to delegate tasks to her team.
I always want to tackle real scenarios that nature impacters like you face. So, instead of sharing it only with her, I thought I share the 9 hacks that helped me to prioritize better.
Delegating means handing over a task to another team member, which makes them now responsible for that task.
No matter if you are in the middle of a busy period or not, delegating plays a crucial role in building a relationship with your colleagues. Of course, it enhances trust. But it also helps them and you to grow.
Before the start. If this newsletter provides value to you, it would mean the world to me if you could share it with 1 other biodiversity hero this week.
The more impacters know about it, the higher the chance gets that I can continue this work for the years to come.
Now, let’s dive into my ten delegation tips!
The reasons why learning how to delegate is important
We are losing nature at an alarming rate. There is no time to waste. Yes, thanks to AI, we can handle much more stuff on our own.
But your day, too, has only 24h. There is only that much you can do.
To double your impact, reflecting on which tasks you truly need to be in charge of and which ones can be assigned to your coworkers is key.
The question is, how to delegate and how to do it efficiently and effectively? The following ten delegation tips should give you a clear idea of how to tackle this key aspect of a good leader.
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10 valuable delegation tips
1. Calculate your hourly salary
If you are hired by a nature company or NGO, calculate your hourly salary. If you are the founder, determine the salary that you would like to give yourself.
When you have that number. Write it down and place it somewhere where you can see it every day. Whenever you are now tackling a task, ask yourself if you would spend that sort of money when hiring a freelancer for that task.
E.g. Spell checking a text. If you do it, the task costs 100€. If you outsourced it, it would cost you 10€. 90€ discrepancy.
For every task that doesn’t justify this sort of investment, delegate it.
2. Hire the right people
Duh.
But if you hire the right people, there is no need to be scared. Yes, in the beginning, things might be a bit bumpy. But if you truly believe you hired the right person for the job, they will be able to deal with the task you appoint to them.
If you are constantly afraid to delegate, reconsider if you have the right team.
3. Write down all the tasks you do
For 2 weeks, write down in your calendar every task you do. After 2 weeks, look back and color code the tasks that you should delegate.
You might be surprised how colorful your week becomes. This can be one of those “Aaaaaaah” moments that will help you to act.
4. Training is an investment, not a cost
Yes, it is time-consuming to train your team member in a new task. But rather than seeing it as a cost, see it as a time investment.
You might need to spend once x hours to train them. But from that moment on, you will save x hours per week.
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5. Create clear documentation
“If I don’t do it, I know I will have to rework all of it anyways. So I rather do it myself right away.” One of the most frequent sentences I heard in regard to this topic.
This might be hard to hear, but there is a good chance your communication & documentation sucks.
Whenever you crack the code of a task and how it should be done, write down a clear step-by-step how your team can do it.
I personally love Notion to do this, in combination with Loom.
With Loom, you can create short video tutorials that get your team up to speed in no time.
6. Reflect on your & the team’s strengths
Before you can delegate, it is crucial that you reflect again on where your biggest strengths and the ones of each team member lie. Play those to the maximum.
Maybe you are the creative one, but one of your team member love numbers. So delegate tasks with the different skill sets in mind.
7. Automate & rotate shitty tasks
This was the biggest challenge in my old team. I knew that some tasks were awful, and I felt bad about delegating them.
So first, I always checked if there were some tasks that I could automatize so that no one would have to do them. A good tool for this is Zapier.
If automation isn’t possible, I was rotating the awful tasks. So that each one of us had to do them from time to time.
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8. Chose speed over perfection
I disagree with many things Jeff Bezos says, but on this one, I am with him. “Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70 percent of the information you wish you had, if you wait for 90 percent, in most cases, you’re probably being slow.”
I use the same strategy when it comes to perfection. I have the tendency to deliver perfect products. However, most of the time, this follows my definition of perfect. Not the one of the user or customer.
So I learned to create things fast, get feedback and go from there. The same goes for delegation.
The tasks might not be handled 100% to the standard you like, but if they get 70% at high speed, you still make more processes in the same time frame.
+ You can then do the fine-tuning after they create the 70%.
9. Be transparent about what you work on
My second most prominent thought when I had a team was that I had the feeling if I delegated, they would think that I was not doing anything.
So I proactively communicated what I was working on. I made my calendar visible so that they could see the actions. Furthermore, I shared with them in our meetings my accomplishments and struggles.
This drastically reduced this feeling.
10. Be clear on responsibility & accountability
Many love the RACI model. While in theory, it sounds great, in practice, I found it hard to implement.
It is a great way to set up things initially, but when the daily routine kicks in, it is too detailed.
So I mainly use responsibility and accountability. Most of the time, I gave my team the responsibilities and the accountability of tasks. I let my team member shine in the light when things worked out. If things didn’t work out, I took the blame.
Had the feeling that this reduced their fear of taking over bigger tasks.
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Your turn: time to improve your delegation skills
5 actions to take next week to improve your delegation
- Block yourself some time next week to work on your delegation.
- Choose 1 of the hacks to implement.
- Test with the team.
- When you successfully implement, take the next hack.
- Send me your delegation issue. I am happy to give you 3 free tips. Just write me at oliver@wildbusinessmates.com.
Cheat sheet to learn how to delegate within your nature business or NGO
In a nutshell: You only have 24h. Work with your team members to get more done in less time.
Best book: Leaders eat last by Simon Sinek
Best tools: Notion to organize. Loom for video tutorials. Zapier for automation.
Best practices: Ted has the best library of best practices that break down an idea
Set up time: 30 minutes
Maintaining time: It is a constant struggle, but with time the time investment is increasing, if you keep your team together.
We have very limited time to protect nature. 2030 and 2050 are just around the corner. Learn how to delegate and use these delegation tips to pick up speed while increasing your impact.
See you next week.
Have a wild one!
Oliver
🦧 Whenever you are ready, there are 2 ways we can help you:
1. 1-to-1 business consulting. Detailed and personalized consulting to double the impact of your biodiversity organization in the shortest possible time. Not sure how good your pitch deck is?
Sign up for the waiting list by writing us at oliver@wildbusinessmates.com (unfortunately, we are booked out at the moment).
2. Wild Business Mates in Action. Wild Business Mates help you execute in areas you are struggling with. Tech, Marketing, Sales, Communication, etc. We can realize all the steps I mentioned above.
