“The surest way for an executive to kill himself is to refuse to learn how, and when, and to whom to delegate work.”
JAMES CASH PENNEY, founder of the J.C. Penney retail chain
Here’s something many startup entrepreneurs forget: If you truly want to scale your business, you’ll need to learn how to delegate so you can focus on your company’s bigger picture issues.
“As organizations grow increasingly complex, duties and responsibilities across the workforce can become less well defined,” writes Robert Heller in How to Delegate. “Often it seems as though everyone is doing everyone else’s job. Delegation is the manager’s key to efficiency, and benefits all.”
But delegating isn’t the simple, straightforward process it masquerades as; it takes time and effort to master the art.
“The inability to delegate properly is the main reason that executives fail,” says Harvey Mackay, who founded Mackay Envelope Company, now MackayMitchell Envelope Company, in 1959. He remembers needing to hire a person to run the company’s day-to-day operations while he studied the industry and charted his company’s future direction. “I learned quickly that delegating often requires a detour outside your comfort zone.”
Managers often mistake delegation for passing off work. “So they don’t do it—and they wind up wasting their time as well as the company’s time and resources,” Mackay says.
How do you start delegating successfully? Here are some tips.
1.Don’t look for perfection. Your objective is to get the job done, not create a masterpiece. Establish a standard of quality and a fair time frame for reaching it. Once you establish the expectations, let your staff decide how to carry out the project. “You have to learn to trust your staff,” says Larry Alton, an independent business consultant. “You’re the one that hired them—isn’t that because you thought they were good at their jobs?” Yes, you might challenge them with some tasks outside their comfort zones, but you’ll be there to guide them if they run into any trouble along the way.
2.Provide complete job instructions. Make sure your employee has all the information needed to complete the job. Confirm that “the members of your team understand the responsibilities you are asking them to take on,” says Peter Economy, author of numerous business books. “Encourage them to ask questions if they are uncertain what it is you want them to do.”
3.Stop believing you’re the only one who can do the job properly. The biggest obstacle to successful delegation is the persistent urge to not delegate anything at all. Sometimes, it’s a point of pride for a boss to retain as much work as possible. “But more often, it’s created from the mentality that your workers wouldn’t be able to handle it, or that they wouldn’t get it done the right way,” Alton says. Just because an employee does things differently doesn’t mean he or she won’t do the job right or as well. “If you establish expectations of the goal and the standards to follow, then methodology shouldn’t be an issue,” Mackay says. An important and often overlooked part of delegation is that it helps develop employees for advancement and creates a better work environment.
4.Focus on teaching new skills. Though the assignment of your first few tasks will take more time than it will save you (since you’ll need to train your chosen employee), consider it an investment. By transferring those skills, you’ll be opening the door to assigning similar tasks to that individual in the future, ultimately saving more time than you spent teaching. And don’t forget: As you hand over greater responsibility, it’s important to understand that learning new skills sometimes includes making mistakes. “Don’t punish employees who make a good-faith effort to do things right,” Mackay says.
5.Check on progress. Let the employee do the work, but check in periodically on progress. Don’t look over employees’ shoulders or watch their every move. When you outline the expectations in the beginning, make sure you build in checkpoints for follow-up. “When you check your employees’ work, not only will you catch issues and problems as they occur, but also your employees will be motivated by your personal attention to the work they are doing,” Economy says.
6.Say thank you to the people who have accepted the responsibility. If your workers have done well with a task you assigned, let them know by publicly thanking them and offering genuine praise. If they’ve fallen short, don’t be afraid to give them some constructive criticism.
When you ask CEOs of small-to-mid-sized companies how they intend to grow, they generally cite innovation—coming up with new products for existing markets or winning market share from competitors. And they cite acquisition. Far fewer mention expanding internationally.
But these days, many companies can tap into a new revenue stream by selling their existing products to entirely new customers in global markets. Lower travel costs and easier communications have made it significantly easier to do so.
“Going global can be scary. Really scary. You can easily get in over your head,” says Melissa Lamson, a business consultant. “But the more homework you do, the lower the risk. And, I can assure you the rate of return can be huge.”
The U.S. Small Business Administration, which estimates that only 1 percent of small businesses are currently exporting overseas, urges entrepreneurs to take their products worldwide. Some 96 percent of all of the world’s consumers and over three-quarters of the world’s purchasing power are outside of the United States, according to the SBA.
“India and China add an Australia and New Zealand to their populations every year,” says Suresh Kumar, who has served on the United States National Export Initiative. “How can you afford to ignore those? That’s where the markets are gravitating.”
We asked a few experts for their best tips on tapping world markets. Here’s what they said.
1.Choose your overseas markets with care. The first step in expanding internationally is to pinpoint the country or region you want to expand into. You need to base these decisions largely on cultural, economic, and political factors, as well as on market risk—and on where there are potential customers for your goods and services. For instance, take a look at where international traffic or orders are originating from on your website. When considering a country, find out whether there are any tariffs on your products or trade barriers, and understand the economic and political policy of the country.
2.Conduct market research. “Speak with customers, marketing partners, or distributors and evaluate competitive products,” advises Lamson. For research, you might start with the Department of Commerce’s website or Trade-Port.org, a repository of information for businesses conducting trade. The types of research you can do include primary market research—collecting data directly from international marketplaces through telephone interviews or contacting potential customers or government representatives. Your research can also include secondary market research, such as news articles, trade statistics, and data from export specialists.
3.Put boots on the ground. There is no replacement for having a member of your team on the ground and experiencing the specific international market, getting close to the customer, and checking out the competition, says Marc Meyer, a professor of entrepreneurship at Northeastern University. “This is firsthand research,” he says. “Once that’s done, you can prototype anywhere, but your product or service must be tested directly with your target global customer.”
4.Know your enemy. Take a deep dive into the market-specific competitive arena, understand the strengths and weaknesses of future challengers, and decide if there’s a market opportunity for your product or service, Meyer says. “And, by all means, make sure your nomenclature translates properly in the new market,” he adds. A number of big companies have made classic blunders, such as Mercedes-Benz entering China under the brand name “Bensi,” which literally translated means “rush to die.” The same goes for a logo: A crown, for instance, may have different meanings, depending on the country.
5.Alter your pricing model as you learn. The dynamics of distribution, pricing, and packaging tend to be very different for foreign markets. In India, for example, it’s largely about high volume and low price; China is high volume but a broader product portfolio; and the Gulf States, low volume, but premium. In many global markets, the distribution structure is very different than the United States, Meyer says, meaning you need to become an expert in how to sell within an international target.
6.Ask for help. One of the mistakes business owners can make is being too solo-minded in their thinking about new markets, says Minas Apelian, a vice president in external venturing at Saint Gobain, a French multinational corporation. Create a comprehensive list of companies in your industry, visit their websites, and reach out to their executive teams. You may find partnership opportunities here, in addition to creating alliances. Also review country-specific industry association websites and begin connecting with the leaders or executive boards of those organizations. Likewise, research industry-related trade shows and follow the same process of meeting the organizers and learning about your industry in that region. Any of these moves “can provide a small business owner with the where, when, and how to enter, say, Brazil, without investing precious time and money,” he says. Caution, he adds, is the watchword.
7.Test. Learn. Refine. Do all of your product or service testing, learning, and refining here in the United States before contemplating a foreign foray, Apelian advises. “Make your mistakes here,” he says. “Learn from them. Then begin conducting due diligence on a target market.”
8.Devise an export strategy. Your prospects for selling overseas will be helped if you put together an export plan that details your business goals, your plan for financing this expansion, and how you intend to sell your goods or services abroad. One of the key questions you need to ask is how you are going to sell your goods overseas. Building an international sales team can be achieved through partnerships, alliances, and direct hiring. You may also want to research local executive recruiters, local and niche job boards, and the local newspapers to learn more about how talent in that particular region finds the best employers. If you plan to sell online, you can simply let the international customers find your website and shop just as your domestic customers already do. Using this method, you still need to figure out how to ship overseas and learn about foreign taxes, duties, and customs laws. You can also actively find ways of using your website to target new foreign markets. This might include translating parts of your website into a local language, and employing a fluent speaker to use social networks to attract interest in your website, business, and products or services.
9.Accept local business customs, don’t fight them. Every market will have local ways of doing things that are different from what you know, says Ian Jackson, managing partner with consultancy Enshored, who has led global businesses. “There have been times I’ve been utterly frustrated at how long it takes to do some things or how much things cost in some markets,” he says. “But you are a foreigner and as much as you think you know better, the locals don’t need to hear it.” Going along with the local customs is the better approach.