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The Power of Diligent Delegation In Achieving KPIs

The Power of Diligent Delegation In Achieving KPIs

With an abundance of startups launching each year, worldwide networking events and conferences aim to teach business skills like internet marketing and data protection. For entrepreneurs with a digital presence, there’s Tech Crunch Disrupt and Digital Hollywood. Other conferences like Hay House’s Writer’s Workshop and Blog Her appeal to content writers and copywriters. People fly in from all over the world to attend these popular events.

After attending the standard workshops, retreats, and seminars, business owners often join mastermind groups hosted and supported by successful digital entrepreneurs hoping to learn better strategies. One of many in-depth strategies taught and reinforced within mastermind meetups is the power of KPIs.

Before learning about KPIs, many business owners are stuck in a rut because they don’t understand how to create an effective cycle of tasks, goals, and measurements. Implementing KPIs pulls them out of this ditch, but they have to do something uncomfortable first: learn to delegate.

Delegating is the most challenging skill you’ll learn

Clark Valberg from Entrepreneur.com writes about the difficulty leaders have with delegation. Entrepreneurs are programmed to despise laziness, and some feel guilt around delegating tasks. A growing business will fail without delegation because one person can’t possibly do it all. If you’re overwhelmed and struggling to meet your goals, but you’re hesitant to hire a team, it’s time to do so and start delegating.

Once you’ve accepted the importance of delegating, it’s time to fine-tune your delegation strategies.

Smart delegation is the foundation for hitting targets on time

Having 20 staff members on your team won’t guarantee you’ll finish tasks on time or hit your targets, but strong delegation will. Reaching goals isn’t about how many people you have, but how you distribute the load. Each person has a different level of competency determined by his or her level of stress, experience, and skill. Delegating according to competency is imperative.

For instance, say you have ten people on your content marketing team. Each person has unique abilities regarding the subjects they know, how fast they can write, how well they edit their content, and the workload they can manage.

It wouldn’t make sense to distribute assignments randomly to ensure everyone receives an equal share of the overall responsibilities. You might think equal distribution prevents people from becoming overwhelmed, but your fastest writers will be done and bored while others struggle to keep up.

Delegate according to personal abilities to have your projects completed on time and to your satisfaction.

If you’re going to assign responsibility to KPIs, make them relevant

On the other side of delegation is responsibility, and that’s where new business owners miss the mark with assigning responsibility to KPIs. Responsibility for KPIs should be distributed in direct relation to a person’s work. As a rule, a person or team should only be held responsible for a specific KPI when they have a direct influence on the outcome.

KPIs should be assigned by department heads

Sometimes when a business owner learns about KPIs, in their excitement, they create KPIs for their entire team. As a result, many workers are held responsible for results they have no influence over because the business owner isn’t familiar with their daily responsibilities. For example, an owner might make a web developer responsible for the number of opt-ins received on a web form, but that developer has no control over the copy or design. That developer won’t be able to make the necessary changes to increase results, and therefore should not be responsible for that measurement.

If you don’t have department heads, these KPI examples will show the relationship between various business objectives and the responsibilities of several departments.

When leaders delegate incorrectly, it’s often due to a lack of structure within the departments. One person running all departments isn’t going to know everyone’s job duties well enough to assign them the correct KPIs. Make employees responsible for the appropriate KPIs so they can implement changes to hit company targets.

Let go and be patient

Letting go of tasks is hard when you want things done a specific way. When you’re serious about growing your business, the best you can do is explain your expectations and hand over the reins. Be willing to accept the potential for imperfection, and give the grace of gentle correction and guidance toward meeting your expectations.

Melissa Thompson writes about a wide range of topics, revealing interesting things we didn’t know before. She is a freelance USA Today producer, and a Technorati contributor.

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