mabinda.com Business, Education, Technology Commentary.

When starting a business, you are practically the one who does everything. You are the product manager. You are the marketing and sales person. You are the human resources manager. You are the operations manager. Basically, everything revolves around you. Then the business starts making initial sales and gradually, you begin hiring staff to help you grow the business so as to meet the expansion needs. So, in that way, you lose certain aspects of direct management and running of the business and to that extent, you begin to worry that letting go of some roles will diminish the nature of the business. This is especially if the business is a craft and so you are the skilled person say making the software or cooking that favorite meal that customers love.

So, how do you let go of some roles whilst ensuring that quality is not lost? How do you trust your employees with aspects that are so fundamental to the business? The thing is, it’s hard to let go however big your company is. Elon Musk, for instance, says he doesn’t invest in businesses that he himself doesn’t run. And he runs Space X, and Tesla, and only recently left the CEO role at X. So, in that case, Elon Musk believes that without him, the business would no doubt crumble. First, begin by delegating non core roles. For instance, when it comes to hiring, set the standards upon which you want employees hired and stick to those standards. For instance, initially, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin used to read the resumes of the applicants personally, and you only got hired after the two were satisfied that you met the threshold to work at Google. But these days, the two are not in active management of the company, and so are not involved in direct hiring of employees.

Letting go of certain tasks is hard, but you should learn the art of delegating. As the business grows, yoh should be abandoning the day to day roles and only be setting the vision and agenda of the company. You should be strategizing on where the business should be five ten years into the future, and that’s how you are going to end up wildly successful in the business. Be a leader who deals with overall vision, and then the managers will take care of the day to day complexity. Or maybe from the get go, just ensure that you delegate non essential tasks, maybe the only one you can hold for so long is the product manager, and then the rest you can trust your core employees to build the vision that you have for the company. A company is only as great as it’s weakest link. What happens when you get sick? What happens when you suddenly are not able to show up for work? Does it mean the business operations stop? That should be something you should think about. Micro managing is the reason why family businesses crumble on the demise of the founder, but companies are able to stay afloat even after the founder has gone since they have systems and structure in place.