Hi Reader,
There's a particular kind of stuck that I see a lot.
It's not the founder or CEO who hasn't hired anyone yet. It's the one who has hired someone, maybe even built a small team, and is still doing everything themselves.
The tasks drift back. The questions pile up. It just feels easier to do it yourself.
And the truth is, that's not a delegation problem. It's a structure problem. Because real delegation (the kind that actually frees up your time and your headspace) asks more of you than assigning a task and hoping for the best.
It asks you to get clear on what 'done' actually looks like. To document the process that currently only lives in your head. And then to sit on your hands for the first few months while someone else finds their rhythm with it.
None of that is comfortable. Especially if your standards have always been the thing holding everything together.
This week on the blog, I've written about what delegation actually requires, including the identity shift that sits underneath all of it, and where to start if you already know you're the bottleneck but can't quite get out of your own way.
It's practical. But it's also honest about the bit that doesn't often get said: that letting go of how things get done is sometimes the hardest part of growing a business.
Read the blog here 👉 On Letting Go: What Delegation Really Asks of You as a Business Owner​
Highlights from the Ops Suite this week
Tool of the week
If you're working on documenting processes so you can actually hand things over, Loom is worth a look. Record yourself doing the task once, narrate as you go, and you have an instant handover video that your team can come back to without needing to ask you again. It won't replace a written SOP, but as a starting point when you're time-poor, it's one of the quickest wins I recommend.
This week's reflection question
What's one task you've taken back from someone else in the last month, and what would it have taken to let them keep it?
And something worth remembering
The people I've worked with who delegate best aren't the ones who found it easiest to let go. They're the ones who got honest about what they were actually protecting. Usually it wasn't the task itself, it was the standard (and I see myself in this with my own delegation!). And once they'd written that standard down clearly enough for someone else to follow, the task was surprisingly easy to hand over. The documentation isn't just the boring bit. It's the whole point.
Have a great Thursday,
Katie