If you're new to business, or getting your feet wet as an entrepreneur, you may not have direct experience with delegating work. But you can get inspiration from the world around you and learn how.
If you've ever worked outside the home in any capacity, you'll likely have been on the "providing" end of delegation. Your supervisor assigned tasks to you; he or she was assigned tasks by his or her supervisor, and onward up the chain of command. Anywhere you go, you're seeing the results of delegation, sometimes effective and sometimes not so much. You stop at a restaurant for lunch - there's a head cashier, a head waiter, and a restaurant manager. The plant that manufactured your furniture has a chain of command...and a quality control team. That PTA you're a member of has committees and positions and committee chairs. When you're a solo-preneur, you may think you don't have anyone to delegate to. But now more than ever, that is incorrect. There are countless Virtual Assistants ready to help (check out EliteVirtualAssist, my favorite), as well as freelancers like me who specialize in a variety of skills and talents. You can find a someone to whom to delegate just about any task. And of course, The Word Doctor is always here to help you present the most effective window to the online world, by providing editing and proofreading support, marketing communications, and more. Remember, for every task you outsource, your time expands to allow you to accomplish so much more, effectively and accurately!
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When I collaborate with a client, I know that being able to easily share files is critical to smooth sailing. We need to work off the same set of documents, and we need access to all the same supporting materials.
We've all experienced the trauma (ok, maybe not trauma, but certainly stress!) of sharing documents by email. It's so easy to lose track of what changes have been made, and by whom. Instead, use a virtual "file cabinet" like Google Drive or Dropbox, or a project management system like Asana, to store items every team member will need. Set up project folders with explicit titles so that anyone on the team can easily find what they're looking for. Within those folders, store anything, and I mean ANYTHING, that a team member might need. You might want a folder for images, one for applications, one for setup or venue - consider the aspects of your particular project that make the most sense to organize the folders. When changes are made to a file, ensure that it's saved back into the same folder so you don't end up with multiple versions of the same document - something I see often! You may want to have team member save items they have edited as "V1 date, V2 date," so it's easy to tell at a glance what the most recent update is, and yet you will still be able to recover previous versions if something goes wrong. AND, as I said, you won't have ten of the same file saved! Tip: be sure to include the date in the file name. Whenever I manage a project I like to outline everything up front in a team meeting, so everyone is "on the same page" about timelines, roles, and how communication will be handled. Be sure to have regular meetings with subsets of the team sharing the same roles. Set expectations up front so there are no surprises! |