Are you assigning tasks or actually managing?

Many business owners believe they delegate a lot. And often they do: clients, projects, administration, marketing, people. Yet they are still overwhelmed by questions.

• “Can I do it this way?”
• “How much can I offer?”
• “What should I say to the client?”
• “Do you approve?”

The problem is that delegating a task and delegating a decision are two different things. In this article, I explain the difference and what you can start doing today.

You can tell someone “you manage this client” and still insist that every discount, exception or change be approved by you. On paper you delegated the account, but in practice the decision-making power stayed exactly where it was.

Here are two signs that can make this clearer.

1. Your team wants more autonomy

If you often find yourself saying “I wish the team were more autonomous”, know that 90% of teams dream of being autonomous. But in the vast majority of cases, look closely, if every decision goes through you, that will never happen. And if you complain about their lack of autonomy while every decision still comes to you, both you and the team are experiencing frustration. In this case, you absolutely need to work on trust and clarity. Autonomy has room to grow when someone knows exactly which decisions they can make alone, within what limits, what information to consider and when to involve someone else.

A sales manager, for example, might have the freedom to offer discounts up to a certain percentage, as long as the margin remains above a set threshold. Beyond that limit, the decision is shared.

2. Every solution still comes from you

If you immediately give a solution whenever a colleague brings you a problem, you are teaching them to come back to you rather than make their own decisions. Try changing your response: instead of providing an answer, start asking:

• “What would you do?”
• “What alternatives have you considered?”
• “What is the biggest risk?”
• “What criteria would you use to decide?”

With these questions you start training that professional to think through the problem using the same criteria you would use, before asking for your approval.

These are important points to reflect on. As long as a team can only carry out tasks but not make decisions, the business owner remains involved in almost every process, doing more harm than good. Growth calls for something else: deciding where decision-making power can be handed over, with rules clear enough to keep autonomy from turning into disorder.

You do not need to be informed of everything before it happens. You need to know that decisions are being made according to criteria that fit the company.

When that really happens, a company makes the most important shift: from “distributing work” to “trust, processes and management”.

If you want to work on decision-making, roles and your team's autonomy, book a free consultation to discuss a proposal tailored to your company.