Entrepreneurs often hoard critical skills, making themselves irreplaceable and their business fragile. The fix: start delegating through tiny Standard Operating Procedures, even just a sticky note or short video, then let others improve them. Build the habit and you free yourself.
What I have noticed with so many entrepreneurs is what I call the superhero syndrome. All the talent, all the knowledge for a certain skill or many of the skills is reserved just to me as the business owner. I build this wall or moat around it and no one else does it well. The benefit is, of course, all the talent is with me, so it won't leave the organization. But the other challenge is I can't leave the organization if it causes this weird codependency. And so what we need to do to elevate our organization, but also to elevate our skills, is to stop doing the work and start designing the outcomes. The first thing is to start to learn the process to delegate. Start off with a mini sop, something you do regularly, something that maybe is of low consequence, just to see how you can document it. Can you write it on a sticky note in three or four steps? Can you then assign it to someone else, A vendor, a contractor, part time? Help one of your employees and then observe from afar how they're doing, empowering them to oversee it and also modify it and enhance it over time. Then do the next process. The thing isn't that Your business needs SOPs as much as it needs you to learn how to delegate. And you delegate by creating many SOPs. A little tip here is I wouldn't do by paper anymore. I do by video. Do an explanation via video. Record a process you're doing on the computer all in video, so that the person consuming it can see it, watch it and hear it. That simple. Do it starting now.
