Establish your boundaries
As a founder you are used to doing everything. You find it hard to step away and let other people lead work in your business. But by continuing to do everything, you are are being a bottleneck to scale. This chapter will address the work that you ‘shouldn’t do’.
It’s entirely possible that this is your first time leading a business. How do you know what you should and shouldn’t be doing? I imagine you don’t want to handball work off to your team because they’re already overworked. So who’s going to do the work? You might need to get creative and open your thinking to new ways of working.
The writer Jenée Desmond-Harris had this to say about how to divide your to-do list: ‘I started dividing my to-do list into 1) things I have to do, 2) things I want to do, and 3) things other people want me to do. Life changing! I often don’t get to #3 and I finally realized... this is what it means to have boundaries.’
This is your opportunity to let go of the work and beliefs that are making you feel stuck.
What work can you decrease and delegate?
Here’s a scenario that might help shift your mindset and help create new boundaries.
A founder and CEO I worked with had this challenge. Jenny needed to source some new engineers but didn’t have a recruiter or P&C person to support the work. So she spent hours and hours trawling LinkedIn looking for potential candidates. She didn’t necessarily love this work but she did it because she knew what she was looking for! (Assuming no one else did…) We discussed this task.
✓ How many hours did Jenny spend just sourcing a candidate? 20 hours
✓ How many hours in interviews? 6 hours
✓ Approximately how much per hour is her time worth (salary)? Say $200k salary, which is roughly $100 per hour
✓ So, that added up to $2,600
✓ And this is only the financial cost, it does not account for the time and energy, or the important work that was postponed or missed because this was the focus
The business had recently recruited a superstar administration manager, Susie. We discussed delegating the online searches to her, with very clear criteria to support the work. The next time an engineer was needed:
✓ Susie did the online search, saving Jenny 20 hours
✓ Jenny still did the interviews, which is fine
✓ The admin person was on a contract rate of $35 per hour, with 20 hours of work came to $700
✓ The financial cost was $1300, with a saving of $1,300. That’s half the financial cost
✓ And the cost of freeing up 20 hours of the founder and CEO’s time? Priceless
How much of that non-essential work are you doing?
I know that sometimes you feel overwhelmed and not sure where to start. How can I delegate? Everyone is busy, and no one can do this as well as I can. (Really??) Delegating to others in your team helps them to grow and develop. It shows you trust them, it will engage them. If you keep everything to yourself, you alienate your team and your business won’t be able to scale. Delegate early, don’t wait.
And then there’s the work you know you should decrease. There will always be things that you love doing, but they’re no longer the role of the leader of a growing business. There will be technical challenges that you’re dying to jump into, but it’s not your place. People will know what they need to do, and you getting involved will likely cause a mess.
If you can focus your time and effort on the work you love that you must do, you won’t have time for the work you shouldn’t do. This is a win for everyone!
Are you stuck?
Founders often get caught up in the busyness of high growth and pace and band-aiding and hiring, that they don’t take a breath and remember why they started their business in the first place. It might have been a passion project or a ground-breaking concept, and yet sometimes they feel stuck. Hint: it’s because you’re not doing the work you love!
You’re not enjoying your work anymore. You’re afraid of failure. You’re afraid of disappointing people. Your vision is becoming out of reach. You feel undervalued. You’re starting to feel like you’re the only one who really cares. You’re feeling overwhelmed and out of your depth. You’re feeling stuck.
Here’s a story about Josh.
I recently worked with a founder, Josh, whose business was growing rapidly. This was, of course, great, but he was struggling. He wasn’t getting the time to do what he loved — thinking and designing. His day was filled with operational work, responding to emails, having meetings about meetings, and fixing every little problem that arose.
He knew things needed to change if he wanted his business to continue to grow. But Josh was feeling stuck. He needed to work out what he was doing that was not a good use of his time and eliminate it.
We used the ‘do the right work’ model to map Josh’s work. Not surprisingly, most of his work was below the line in ‘shouldn’t do’ territory. We needed to work on a mindset shift to enable Josh to delegate. There was a lot of resistance! He needed to value himself and what he brought to his business. It took time and coaching, but now he spends the first hour of his day thinking and designing. He also blocks out time to gather his thoughts, work on new ideas and reset. He immediately delegates anything below the line or not the best use of his time.
Everything changed once he realised that he couldn’t be everything to everyone and that he was far more valuable doing the right work.
Communicate your boundaries clearly
Once you have established the work you are no longer doing, communicate this clearly to your team, or else there will be confusion. Set clear expectations of who will be picking up the work, and set the boundaries that you are only involved when it is truly unavoidable.
Legend List. Start here:
Identify work to Delegate, and do that.
Identify work to Decrease, and do that.
Establish your boundaries, and clearly communicate them.
If you’re ready to let go of the work below the line, I’d love to chat and see how I can help.
