How to delegate using the 50/20/10 rule.

How a simple rule of delegation can allow you to grow your business.

It’s hard to delegate, even harder if you are a Type-A personality. It does not matter if you own your own business, manage a team of people, or simply are trying to have kids do chores, more often or not you find that people just do not do as good of a job as you.

If you are in one of these positions, your concerns are probably valid. After all, the mere fact that you are in a leadership position often is because you do things better than the average employee. Even as a parent, your kid never washes the dishes or cuts the grass as well as you. It’s why you are paid the big bucks right?

It was no different when we started our business. I am a deep dive, hands-on kind of guy who enjoys playing in different areas, so when we launched GCS, I found it interesting to immerse myself in finance, sales, taxes, contracts, marketing, and many other weird areas that I did not know much about at the time.

In many ways, we were forced to do this. Early on it’s very advantageous to understand the complete cycle of how your business runs and delegating (or hiring) out too early can erode profits and leave huge gaps. But you have to know when to make the switch because it’s a trap.

The problem is that when you decide to delegate, you are disappointed because the person is only half as capable as you, even more so after you have spent a few years doing something. You get deterred and end up continuing doing way more than you need to. Your problem is the #2 most common problem in running a business: Expectation Management.

You are expecting someone to be 100% as good as you and not only is that unrealistic but it’s diminishing returns. Instead, shift your mindset and follow what I call the 50/20/10 rule.

First, only focus on delegating or hiring someone 50% as good as you. Although this is still a challenge at times, rest assured that it’s possible.

Then, teach him 20% of your job. Don’t try to teach him everything, simply for every 5 special things you know, teach him one of those.

Afterward, find a way to automate 10% of your job. Usually, this can be done with technology but there are a lot of other ways. Again, find the easy things that remove human error. Do not try to automate things that are hard and complex.

That’s it.

If you are good in math, you may be confused right now because that only adds to 80% and that my loyal readers, is probably the most critical piece of this entire article to remember.

With delegation and hiring, you have to learn to accept 80% of your ability and move on. It’s not that you are settling, it’s that you have bigger fish to fry.

That sentence above should be highlighted and tattooed on every business owner’s right shoulder because it is the most common area we struggle with. We spend too much time looking for someone as good as us when in reality, 80% as good of us will suffice in many areas. You can still find ways to help add a little flare here and there but do you really need to get those extra percentage point improvements on every part of your business? Even more, are you really that much better at the process, or just better at doing it your way?

At some point, they will likely close the gap and if you have good hiring processes, probably even surpass what you were doing. Trust me, it’s possible that other people are better than you at some things.

If you want to achieve bigger things, or simply are tired of dealing with the same problems and conversations day-in and day-out, you have to learn to delegate and for me at least, the 50/20/10 rule has been the best tactical approach I have come up with yet.