The real truth about working smarter, not harder

Running a company or department often pushes your energy to the limit.

To be effective at doing what you are doing best, it's imperative to appear at what tasks you'll either delegate or outsource.

Empowerment

This can be a trigger word. For a few individuals, it suggests that they drop their responsibilities entirely and get someone else to try and do the work. For now, that's fine and smart provided you're only training this person but you've been handling these tasks. Show them how to do it first.

For many business owners and business managers, empowerment suggests completely ceding all responsibility for a specific task to someone else while not explaining how to do it. They expect that person to understand…immediately.

Well, forget it. It's not surprising to regularly hear people say, "I tried to delegate this task but no one was as good at it as I was!" or "I simply couldn't find the right person capable of taking on those responsibilities."

This is a motivating comment. People are usually given responsibilities for which they do not need training and then expected to know how to carry out those duties. An excellent example of this could be that once an individual is promoted to manager/team leader they are automatically expected to understand how to manage themselves and their people.

coming from abroad

And what about the new kid on the block who comes to take over in the same situation, already vacated? They are expected to run the department or business as if they had been working within the company for the last 3 years!

getting help from external sources

Once your car is fixed, does one pay hours to try to fix it or see a mechanic take two hours?

Do you prepare your tax return or have an accountant prepare it for you?

If you wanted a new assistant, would you put up a billboard inside the paper, pay hours to interview people, or have a fulfillment company do all the bottom work and send you the top 3 applicants?

Why waste your precious time on tasks that can do precisely that...waste your precious time. And time is money!

Use the specialists

Use the valuable input from the experts who can take away the stress and the problem and get the tasks done in a tiny fraction of the time it would take you. Of course, you have to pay to get it, however, and wouldn't it be better to be smarter, and not work harder?

Why waste hours on tasks that are not your specialty?

Decide what you do best and then delegate the rest to an outside source. If you feel smart at what you do and happy to share, why not teach someone else those same skills, you might benefit yourself.

Significantly, if you are a business owner, this may allow you extra time to learn about your business rather than doing it.

A Word of Caution For Business house owners

watch out concerning who you get your advice from. I do know of the many little business owners who hear the recommendation of their assistants, spouses, and relatives on how they must run their businesses. However, those individuals haven't been in business themselves. 

By all suggestions that get feedback from your people, but if you need to work smarter, not tougher invest this cash into a business coach or somebody who has already run a flourishing business so that you will avoid expensive mistakes and have somebody else provide a recent perspective. Being too closely concerned can provide you with a tainted view.

The final word

Write down all of your responsibilities as well as the tasks you are just doing. Determine the tasks that someone else might realistically do. Then write down either the name of the person or the form of the person/company who can do this for you or provide some professional help or support,

To find out who can do that work/task smarter, not harder. Constantly lighten your load so you can do what you do best.