Letting go of certain responsibilities in your business is a hard thing to do. After all, it’s a business that you started, nurtured, and spent countless nights worrying about. It has brought you joy, pride, and fulfillment, but also stress, worry and heartache. It’s yours…how could you possibly hand parts of it off to someone else?
But you have to. When you started your company, you probably wore 15 hats every day. In order for your business to grow to the next level, you have to be willing to let some of it go, and Delegate and Elevate to your Unique Ability®.
Delegate and Elevate is the process of letting go of some job responsibilities so you can work in your sweet spot and focus on other parts of your business. In order to let go, you need to shift your thinking from believing that you are the company, to accepting that the company is its own entity.
In EOS, we tell a story about Letting Go of the Vine. The point of the story is that as leaders, we cannot continue to hold onto everything in our company.
In a recent blog, Darren Hardy illustrates your sweet spot beautifully. He makes the case that anything you do only requires five percent of you. The other 95 percent should be outsourced or delegated.
Darren’s analogy (we are on a first name basis, of course) is to that of a cow on a dairy farm. The cow makes the milk. But after that, everything else that brings the milk to market is outsourced. It is sent out to be “pasteurized, homogenized, fortified, packaged, distributed, priced, and sold.”
The cow made the milk, but it has to leave the remaining steps in the process to others.
You have to do the same thing in your business if you expect to grow your company.
So ask yourself – what is your milk making contribution to the success of your “dairy farm”? When do you need to Delegate and Elevate to other people to complete the process so you can stick to making milk?
No one said being a business owner was going to be easy. You have to be there to support your business as it grows, much like it’s your child. As your baby grows up, you’ll let go of her hand as she takes her first steps, wave goodbye as he pulls out of the driveway with his new driver’s license, and step aside as you give her hand in marriage. It’s a part of life, a part of the growing process, and it’s a part of the life of your business as well.
It’s scary, but you have to take the next leap of faith. You have to be open to new and different ideas. You have to ask for help, and be willing to receive it when it is offered. You have to know your own strengths and weaknesses, and be willing to take a back seat when someone else is more skilled in a certain area than you are.
When you can do that, you’ll successfully be letting go, and building a stronger, healthier and more profitable organization.
Do you need help Letting Go of the Vine and taking your company to the next level? If so, contact us. We can help.
About EOS
EOS is a holistic management system with simple tools that help you do three things we call vision, traction, healthy. Vision from the standpoint of first getting your leaders 100% on the same page with where your organization is going. Traction from the standpoint of helping your leaders to become more disciplined and accountable, executing really well to achieve every part of your vision. Healthy meaning helping your leaders to become a healthy, functional, cohesive leadership team.
