How to delegate as a founder? 🤝🏻

A simple approach that just works - Google sheet included.

Jul 30, 2024

Today’s article - “Delegation”

I’m gonna take you to a little backstory first. I started my career as a marketer back when e-commerce was & I use to work in a agency. As an early stage employee, I had little other than just execution. But, as I moved up the career ladder across full time roles at Dunzo & eventually growth at CRED - I realised one thing about myself.

**I s*cked at delegation.**

And it wasn’t because I didn’t have competent team members. I fundamentally operated like the person who will find what needs to be solved, figure the solutioning, figure how to execute & then also execute it myself. But, this didn’t work out for me.

Things always felt crashing all the time.

It made me question a bunch of things starting from “Am I not good for the job?”. Its a whole negative spiral from that moment onwards. I’m sure you have felt the same at some point in your managerial career as a leader or a founder. I want you to know that it’s perfectly normal to feel it.

I asked founders inside GrowthX founder circle.

In responses Akshit, Navam, Harsh & Arvind.

Here’s a better approach to delegation.

Prep-work → Think of “revenue” as the northstar of your business. Let’s say paying customers & average ticket size are the two key levers to revenue. Every single person in your org should be working towards solving revenue & impacting levers.

Step 1.

Look at every thing you are doing as a founder. Essentially spend the first week just writing down all things you spend time on. This can be a simple Google Sheet, Notes app or just writing down on Whatsapp. Format doesn’t matter.

Duplicate this free Google Sheet as a starting point.

Step 2.

Now start listing down everything that does not move the needle on your business. Just keep this list in the backlog. Pick stuff that will move the needle this week/ this month/ this quarter. This will create a lot of new bandwidth for you.

Step 3.

Now you have some breathing space. I want you to list down things that will move the needle on business growth. Once you have a solid list, start listing down names of people ahead of each item who could potentially pick it up.

Now the biggest mistake I did initially was to just directly delegate the specific initiative - that’s wrong.

Step 4.

Now you will define the priority of these specific initiatives and define the sequence in which they need to happen. Here you need to prioritise immediate upside on the business and typically. Most fail to see the importance of sequence.

Step 5.

Now we will get into how to delegate. For this I want you to observe the following stages. It starts from problem identification → Outcomes.

Also, typically the best people to be delegated something critical and requires context is the founding team in early stages and leaders in growth stages (have the authority to look at things macro).

The delegation does not end here.

You as a founder need to keep doing a week 1:1 with reports you delegated work to. Try and understand if they had clarity when the initiative was assigned. Did they really find support structure during the process of execution and when things went red and if they didn’t - you need to iterate on this process.

Closure note.

One of the piece as a founder is to help your team build trust with you. This means you giving active feedback on initial delegation pieces (always give something low business risk), giving them benefit of doubt on initial mistakes & really helping them build confidence in whatever their impact is.

Once initial projects are done, let the delegated projects be 8/10 & allow them to iterate to make them 10/10. But something can’t be 10/10 in the first go does not mean you jump & execute it by yourself - I have done that mistake a lot.

Use this sheet.

Access the free sheet

This looks simple - it isn’t. Just execute and learn through this process. Once you have done it enough with your direct reports, you no more have to do these pieces and just align on “what success looks like”, period.

Also think about it - As a founder who in your team you can really delegate to that have high agency, want to build things and really behave like shareholders. Ensure they are being given the right initiatives and support structures & for god’s sake iterate on your delegation process - it compounds.

Go execute. See you in the next one.