Back to the on-screen lesson ·
Delegate first the work that repeats, is written down, is low risk while someone learns and frees the owner's most valuable hours — handed over with a stated outcome and authority.
Paper packet. Every task here also exists on screen, where it is checked automatically; answers written on paper are not assessed by Nydus. When you are back at a device, enter your answers there.
You will choose the first task to delegate by four tests, sort tasks into ready, write-down-first and keep-for-now, write a handover with an outcome and authority, and value the hours it frees.
Standard work, checklists and reorder points have written the business down. That makes the next step possible: handing some of it to someone else. Owner labor here means the costing input, what the owner's hours earn in the business, not a wage in the accounts.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Delegate | Hand over a task with its outcome and the authority it needs. |
| Outcome | What done looks like, in words someone else can check. |
| Authority | What the person may decide without asking. |
| Ready to delegate | Repeats, written down, low risk while learning, frees good hours. |
| Owner hours | A costing input: what the owner's time earns in the business. |
| Check-in point | An agreed time to look at the work, instead of hovering. |
Owners usually delegate the task they dislike, or the one that is taking the most time right now. Both are poor guides. The first task to hand over should pass four tests:
Maya's packing passes all four: it happens every day, has a written standard, does little harm if slow at first, and frees six hours a week for throwing, which nobody else in the studio can do. Quoting and kiln repairs fail on risk and judgment; glazing fails because it is not written down yet.
Another way: table
Maya's tasks against the four tests.
| Task | Repeats | Written down | Low risk | Frees her best hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Packing orders | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Glazing | yes | no | fairly | yes |
| Quoting for cafés | sometimes | no | no | — |
| Fixing the kiln | rarely | no | no | — |
Another way: steps
A task handed over without an outcome gets done to the new person's standard; without authority, it comes back as a stream of questions. Dev's check-in handover says both: every bike tagged with name, number and the fault in the customer's words; you may take a deposit of up to 40 dollars without asking me. Then show the task, watch it done once, and step back, checking at an agreed time rather than hovering, which teaches the new person that the owner does not trust the handover.
List the week. For one ordinary week, write down each task and the hours it takes. Owners are often surprised by how many hours go on work that is not theirs to do.
Test each task. Mark the four tests: repeats, written down, low risk while someone learns, frees hours the owner can use better.
Value the candidates. For each task that passes, work out what a freed hour earns in the owner's best work, less what it costs to have the task done, times the hours.
Write the handover. The standard work, the outcome and the authority, on one page.
Show, watch, step back. Do it once while they watch, watch them do it once, then leave them to it.
Check at an agreed time. The first few times, then less often.
Check the choice. If the task keeps coming back with questions, the standard work or the authority is incomplete. If the freed hours drift back into small jobs, the value was never realized, and the owner should plan what those hours are for before handing over the next task.
Choosing repeating tasks is allowed because teaching takes time, and a task done daily repays that time quickly. A yearly task would need re-teaching each year.
Requiring standard work first is needed because a task that lives in the owner's head cannot be handed over; it can only be handed over badly. The standard work is the handover.
Valuing the freed hours is allowed because the owner's hours have a use in the business, and that use is the reason to delegate. If the freed hours would earn less than the task costs to have done, the handover loses money, whatever it does for the owner's mood.
Checking at an agreed time, rather than constantly, is needed because constant checking takes back the owner's hours and the new person's confidence at once.
If the photographer's routine editing costs 20 dollars an hour to have done, and the freed hours let her shoot sessions that contribute 55 dollars an hour, each hour handed over adds 35 dollars to the week. That figure uses her hours as a costing input: what they earn in the business. If it comes out negative, the task is not worth handing over yet.
Be honest about whether the freed hours will really be used. An owner who hands over packing to throw more mugs adds value only if the extra mugs sell. If demand is flat, the freed hours might be better spent finding new café accounts. The value of delegating depends on the plan for the time it frees.
Authority should be wide enough that the person can finish the task without asking, and narrow enough that a mistake costs little. A spending limit, a list of decisions they may make, and a clear line for when to call the owner usually cover it: 'order supplies up to the usual amount; if a price has gone up by more than ten percent, check with me first.'
Too little authority turns delegation into relaying messages; the owner is still making every decision, just through someone else. Too much, too soon, risks costly mistakes. Start narrow, and widen the authority as the record of good work grows.
Delegation usually fails in one of a few ways. The task was not ready: there was no standard work, so the new person did it their own way. The outcome was vague, so 'done' meant different things to each of them. The authority was missing, so every small decision came back. Or the owner took the task back at the first mistake.
When a handover goes wrong, look first at which of these it was, and fix that, as in the root-cause lesson: the condition, not the person. Taking a task back should be the last resort, because every task taken back teaches the owner, and the staff, that nothing can be handed over.
Owners who struggle to delegate often say the problem is quality: nobody packs as carefully as they do. Usually the real problem is that the owner's standard was never written down, so the new person cannot meet it and the owner cannot explain what is missing. Write the standard, with a photo of a correctly packed box, and the conversation changes from 'that's not how I'd do it' to 'the standard says bubble wrap around each handle'.
Accept, too, that someone learning will be slower at first and will make small mistakes. Build that into the plan: a lighter workload for the first weeks, a check on the first orders, and a clear way to raise questions. The aim is a task done to the standard by someone else, not done exactly as the owner would do it. Most owners find, within a month, that the written standard is met more consistently than their own unwritten one ever was, because it is now written down, shared and checked against something everyone can see.
Delegation does not need a new hire. Many owners can hand tasks to someone already there: a part-time helper, a family member who works some Saturdays, a contractor such as a bookkeeper. The same four tests and the same handover apply.
Listing the week and testing each task is also the best preparation for hiring. The tasks that pass the tests, added up, describe a role and its hours. The next lesson writes that role down, so the person who takes it on knows what it is for and how their work will be judged.
The owner of a hair salon in Richmond, Virginia, worked six days a week and spent most Mondays, the salon's quiet day, on inventory, the booking calendar and the week's supply order. She listed her week and found about nine hours a week on those tasks, against about 30 hours a week cutting and coloring, which only she and two senior stylists could do.
Inventory and the supply order passed all four tests once she wrote down the reorder points for her twenty main products. The booking calendar did not: it involved judgment about which stylist suited which client. She handed inventory and ordering to her front-desk coordinator, with a spending limit of 600 dollars a week and a rule to check with her on any product whose price rose more than ten percent.
The freed six hours went to a new Monday color clinic, booked at about 70 dollars an hour of contribution. The coordinator's extra hours cost about 22 dollars an hour, so the handover added roughly 290 dollars a week, and the owner had most of her Mondays back within two months.
Lenders and advisers who review small-business plans often ask how the owner will spend their time as the business grows, because an owner who does every task becomes the business's bottleneck. A clear list of tasks to delegate, with the standard work behind them, is one of the best answers to that question.
Delegate what you dislike. Delegate what passes the four tests.
Delegate the biggest job first. Start with the repeatable, written-down, low-risk one.
Handing over means stepping away. It means an agreed outcome, authority, and a check at an agreed time.
Nobody can do it like me. Standard work is how someone else can.
Any freed hour is valuable. Only if there is a plan for what it will earn.
Test the task.
$\text{repeats; written checklist; low risk with a second check}$
Three tests passed.
Check the fourth test.
$\text{frees hours for diagnosing hard faults}$
Work only Dev can do.
Write the outcome.
$\text{every bike ridden; each brake tested}$
What done looks like.
Write the authority.
$\text{hold back any bike that fails; tell Dev}$
What may be decided.
Set the check.
$\text{Dev reviews the tags each evening for a week}$
At an agreed time.
Test the task.
$\text{daily; sink routine written; low risk}$
Three tests passed.
Value the freed time.
$90 \text{ minutes of lunch service}$
The owner works the pass.
Write the outcome.
$\text{every pot clean and racked by 3 pm}$
Checkable.
Write the authority.
$\text{order detergent at the reorder point}$
From the usual supplier.
Show, watch, step back.
$\text{one lunch together, then alone}$
The handover.
Set the check.
$\text{the racks at 3 pm for the first week}$
Not hovering.
List the week.
$\text{throwing, glazing, packing 6 h, quoting, kiln}$
With hours.
Test each task.
$\text{packing passes all four}$
Glazing needs writing down first.
Value the handover.
$(50 - 20) \times 6 = 180$
Dollars a week.
Plan the freed hours.
$\text{throwing for a new café account}$
So the value is real.
Write the outcome.
$\text{every order packed to standard, out by 4 pm}$
Checkable.
Write the authority.
$\text{reorder boxes; choose the shipping service}$
Within the usual cost.
Set the check.
$\text{the first ten orders, then weekly}$
Widening as trust grows.
Test the task.
$\text{weekly; reorder points written; low risk}$
Ready to delegate.
Write the outcome.
$\text{nothing runs out}$
What done looks like.
Write the authority.
Maya spends her week throwing, glazing, packing orders ($6$ hours, following a written packing standard), quoting for new café accounts, and fixing the kiln when it faults. Which should she delegate first?
Complete the worked solution: Maya spends $6$ hours a week packing orders. An assistant could pack at a cost of $22$ dollars an hour, and in the freed hours Maya's throwing contributes about $56$ dollars an hour. Find what each freed hour adds, what the handover adds a week, and what it adds over a fifty-week year.
Find what a freed hour adds.
$(\text{throwing an hour}) - (\text{assistant an hour}) =$ g
Her hours as a costing input.
Find what the week adds.
$(\text{an hour}) \times (\text{hours}) =$ k
Every hour handed over.
Find what the year adds.
$(\text{a week}) \times \text{fifty} =$ y
Fifty working weeks.
Say when it is not worth it.
$\text{if the hour adds nothing or less}$
However tired she is of packing.
The owner of Neighborhood Kitchen lists her tasks. Sort each by whether it is ready to delegate.
| Ready to delegate now | Write it down first | Keep for now | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Washing up, with the written sink routine | |||
| Ordering stock, done from memory | |||
| Setting catering prices | |||
| Wrapping lunches, with the written standard |
Dev's handover note for a new assistant taking over bike check-in. Mark every line that states the expected outcome or the authority given.
This task has no paper form; do it on a device.
Bright Home Cleaning's owner is handing over the weekly supply order. Put the handover in order.
Number the steps in order (write the number in the box):
Dev works $50$ hours a week at Northside Repairs. Handing over check-in and test rides would free $5$ of them. What percentage of his week would that free?
Answer:
An accountant in Columbus spends $6$ hours a week on data entry that an assistant could do for $22$ dollars an hour. She bills clients $100$ dollars an hour, but expects to bill only three quarters of any freed hours. How many dollars a week would handing over the data entry add?
Answer:
A photographer spends $10$ hours a week editing routine photos, which an assistant could do at a cost of $22$ dollars an hour. In those hours she could shoot paid sessions that contribute about $45$ dollars an hour. How many dollars a week does handing over the editing add? Fill in each figure on the sheet.
| Amount | |
|---|---|
| What a freed hour adds, dollars | |
| What the freed hours are worth, dollars |
Lesson test: one question per skill, one attempt each, no hints. Your answers are checked when you submit.
Monica tallies her week: setting up and packing down the stall takes $8$ hours and restocking crates $4$, both written as standard work and low risk; buying at the wholesale market takes $4$ hours and depends on her judgment of the produce. Fill in the hours for the two tasks ready to delegate, and the total she would free.
| Hours a week | |
|---|---|
| Setting up and packing down | |
| Restocking crates | |
| Total hours freed |
You can pick the work to hand over first and hand it over so it stays handed over. Tell someone why the task you dislike is rarely the right first one. Next: writing a role for the person who takes it on.
19. Your turn: Bright Home Cleaning's supply order, step 3
$\text{spend up to the usual amount}$
Check with the owner above it.