How to Hand Off Decisions Without Losing Control (4 D's Model)

Hand off decisions without losing control. Delegating tasks is not the same as delegating decisions, and if decisions still bounce back to you almost all the time as the business owner, then you are the bottleneck in your business. My name is Paul Jarman, and I help 6 to 7 figure business owners turn a firefighting, owner-dependent operation into a calm, structured business so profit can improve without increasing hours. Here today to talk to you about decision handoffs. If any of what I've said sounds a bit like you or your business, then listen up for the next few minutes as I take you through some very basic stuff around decision handoffs. Let's look at the slides. So as I say, handing off decisions without losing control is something that can absolutely be achieved because delegating tasks does not mean you are delegating the decision. You can put systems and frameworks in place to make sure that the decisions that are made are the right ones. So if decisions are always ending up with you, as I said at the beginning of this video, then be assured you are the bottleneck in your business. You are creating the bottleneck that likely means growth is not happening. What it often looks like is approvals, edge cases, client requests, things around pricing or delivery of your product, whether that be a service or a physical product, whatever industry you're in. There are many things it looks like, but they often sit in those 4 buckets. I introduced the 4 Ds model. The 4 Ds model is very simple, and if you've watched my previous content around firefighting, you'll have already conducted a focus audit. You can use the outputs from that focus audit in this exercise here. If you haven't done that, then simply all you need to do is over 5 days, ideally shorter if you really must, but 5 days ideally, is log every time you're asked to do something. Even if it's not a firefighting incident, even if it's not something unexpected, every time you're asked to do something, very quickly log it. Notepad, pen, paper, phone, an app, whatever is your poison for that type of thing. Then simply log down every time you're asked to do something. That's it, just leave it. Do what you would normally do, leave it alone. I advocate that all the time when you're in this kind of discovery phase. And then you employ the 4 Ds against each of those tasks. Do I absolutely need to do it? It's rare, right? It should be rare. If you're a solo, a solo business owner, a solopreneur, then we may need to take a different tilt on this. But in essence, if you've got a team, if you absolutely have to do it and you can't hand it off to anybody, rare, but okay. Can you delegate it? Is it something that you can delegate? We'll come back to that. Can you defer it? Are there things you're asked to do every day? I'm asked to do, you know, sign off of an invoice 3 times a day. Well, actually just do them all once a week and do all 15 at a particular time of the week. You create a cadence around deferring items. So defer stuff if it can wait but needs doing. And then delete or ditch, can use either. Ditch some stuff. I'm sure everybody can find in their day some stuff that they just don't need to do, or they feel like they might need to do, but actually when you dig down into What value is it really adding to me, my day, and my business? The answer is probably nothing, so you can ditch it. So there you go. So you've then classified all of these things you're asked to do in a week, which could be, you know, a dozen or it could be hundreds of things, and you've classified them as one of those 4 Ds. That's a good start. And actually just understanding this stuff will mean you can perhaps ditch a few things. You can put in some cadences around defer. But if you really want to take this mini lesson to the next level, then what you do is apply a first fix. And a first fix for me in this is to take 2 or 3 of the things you marked as delegate and start to think about some processes and some guardrails you can put around how to delegate that task. What's an example of that? Well, actually, let's take the invoice example. Maybe you're asked to sign off dozens of invoices in a day. It depends on your type of business. Well, can somebody else not be doing that? And if that feels like losing control, as I said at the top of this video, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to delegate the decision. You put a framework work around it, the value that somebody can sign off, the type of customer that somebody can sign off for, the type of product they might be able to sign off for. Equally, it might be that they can sign them all off, queue them for payment, and you cast your eye over it at the end of the day just to make sure there's nothing untoward. There are many ways to shape it, but in essence, you can indeed delegate decisions without losing control. Check out some of my other content where I cover lots of items like creating capacity in your day, firefighting, and there's a video where I outline my scale growth Blueprint as well, which is the framework I use across all of my coaching. If you want to check out my website, it's pauljarman.coach, and I look forward to speaking to you soon. Bye!