This Approach Is Better Than Delegation for CEOs
I love concerts. The energy in the crowd, the songs I’ve heard thousands of times before, and the musicians. These incredible artists, many of whom I’ve been watching and listening to for decades.
And every time I see some of my favorite bands, I think, “They still sound amazing. How is that possible?”
I finally recognized what I should have been able to see all along. Musicians do music. All day, every day. They practice their instruments, they write songs, they rehearse. Over and over and over.
They have talent, yes, but talent only gets you so far. Musicians are phenomenal at what they do because they spend so much of their time doing it.
Know whose job doesn’t look anything like a musician’s?
An entrepreneur’s.
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We’re all familiar with the common metaphors of being a business owner. We’re wearing multiple hats, we’re constantly multi-tasking, we’re pulled in 6 or 10 or 30 different directions. Sucked into challenges across the company. Distracted and scattered.
There is a cost to being stretched so thin. It’s not just that entrepreneurs struggle to succeed when they’re involved in every aspect of the business (they do). It’s also that they deny themselves the possibility of becoming phenomenal at the thing they are already good at.
Because becoming phenomenal requires time, and lots of it. It requires attention and effort. In an ideal world, and a world all entrepreneurs should be actively working toward, we spend 80% of our time in our sweet spot.
Think about that for a minute. What would it mean to devote 80% of your energy to the thing you love doing and where you excel? What impact could that have on your business?
The tactic most entrepreneurs turn to when they want to do more of “the good stuff” is delegation. I need to be very clear here. Delegation is great and wonderful. But delegating stuff you don’t like is not the same as doing stuff that you do like. And that’s the real goal here.
I was introduced to this concept of “crowding in,” and it’s a good one for thinking about this particular challenge. Health is a simple example. Let’s say you want to eat healthier.
One approach is to go on a diet. Counting calories, restricting your meals, declaring certain foods off-limits. This is basically the equivalent of delegating: it focuses on what you want to take away.
But eating less isn’t exactly the same as eating healthier. And if your actual goal is to eat healthier, you need to start with healthy foods: vegetables, fruits, lean protein, etc. Crowding in focuses on what TO eat instead of what NOT to eat. And you feel…full. By the time you finish a heaping plate of protein and veggies, you don’t really need to reach for the chips as an after-dinner snack (for the record, I have nothing against chips, but go with me here)
Focus on what you’ll add in, not what you’ll get rid of. Hopefully the parallel to business becomes obvious. I’m not implying that your sales proposals will miraculously send themselves or anything, but the things you don’t want to be doing will naturally get compressed to the margins of your time until delegation becomes the natural next step.
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If you’ve lost sight of where you are amazing, I get it. You’ve probably been doing 7 jobs for so long, feeling not quite successful in any of them. A quick indicator is usually where you make the company the most money. Where does your contribution affect revenue, profit, or valuation?
Take a quiet few minutes to think about it. The answer might surprise you, and you might also be surprised by how little time you’re spending in that area today.
A quick note just for my practitioner CEOs: If you feel like your main skill is “doing the work” of the business, because that’s where you started, that’s okay.
In a smaller firm, you might still work directly with customers. I work with clients who operate this way. They put people around them who take on some of the more traditional CEO responsibilities, because their genius in client delivery is the secret sauce of the company.
I also work with leaders whose superpowers are innovation, and sales engineering, and procurement (I know, but it’s incredibly strategic for this particular company).
Your business doesn’t have to look exactly like everyone else’s. Nor should it. Keep leaning into the unique value you bring into the world. I promise it pays off.
