Entrepreneurial Management

The way we define management is this…using your resources to get a result. That’s it.

Those of you who are solopreneurs may think you don’t have management experience, but you do because you manage yourself. This is why we recommend you really learn how to manage yourself first. This has to be your number one priority.

You may think you are good at managing yourself, but you need to consider how well you are managing your mind and whether you are working excessive hours. If you aren’t managing these well then you need to go back to Module One where we talk about this.

Three Steps to Managing

There are three steps to managing and they are defined by these three questions:

1. What is the result you want?
2. What is the process to achieve that result?
3. Who will execute each step and by when?

It’s important that you start with this question because you are not just looking for tasks to get done, you are looking for outcomes and results. The more specific you can get about the result the better. Remember that the definition of management is how you use your resources to get a result. These questions help you to direct your resources in the best way.

Giving timelines to employees is something many entrepreneurs miss. They don’t ask to have things done by a certain day. They just assume if they ask today that it will get done today.

Delegating to Strategists vs. Tacticians

So the question is, “Who do you delegate to and how do you delegate it?” This will be different based on whether the employee is a strategic or a tactician. If you haven’t watched that video, please go back now and watch it.

Based on the three steps to managing, you can delegate three things. You can delegate the result, the creation of the process, and/or the following of the process.

If you are just delegating the following of the process, that would go to a tactician. This means you’ve created the process, have it all documented, and then you give it to the tactician to implement. This is the easiest form of delegation.

The second type of delegation is to have the employee create the process. This would be delegated to a strategist. You would share the result you want and then ask them to go create a process for accomplishing the result. Once they complete the process you would review it. This means that they are not going to start working on the result or take any action on the result. They are simply going to give you the process they would follow.

This is a beautiful thing because you can learn how your employees are thinking and how they create processes. You can also give feedback on how they think about creating processes.

Once you have someone who has proven they’re super good at creating processes and executing on them, then you can delegate the result. At The Life Coach School we have executives that have created so many processes that we know they’ll do well. We can give them the result of creating a new program and know it will be done. What’s great is that we know they’ll create a process first as they work on the result, so if something happens we can always go back and evaluate the process used and go from there.

Taking Drama Out of Management

When you delegate in this way it takes the drama out of it and here’s why. If you don’t get the result you wanted, one of two things have gone wrong. Either the process wasn’t correct and you fix the process, or you delegated to the wrong person and you fix who you delegate to. Every single problem is either a process or delegation problem. Period.

This also helps when you fire, because if you have a proven process that you know works and you know you’ve delegated correctly, and they are still not able to follow the process, then there is a misalignment. It’s not personal, it’s just math.

Overview

Everything we taught you in this module is self correcting. Watch this video ten times to understand the process. If anything goes wrong you can always tie it back to this. Answer the following questions:

1. What is the result you want?
2. What is the process to achieve that result?
3. Who will execute each step and by when?

Remember that you delegate following processes to tacticians and creating processes to strategists. And when you have someone that’s really experienced, then you just delegate the results.