Create processes before you delegate.

“You need to be 10 times as good as the person you are delegating to - unless you are bringing an expert on board.”

I got this advice recently from an entrepreneur, and I tend to agree in principle. For me it’s not about being better, but about practice. Delegation allows you to scale and practice help you create the process which provides the foundation on which you scale. So I would rephrase it as “Do it 10 times yourself before you delegate.”

We made 300 cold calls at our startup before we delegated. And we knew all the do’s and dont’s. But each new person who came in was able to take it one step further in terms of efficiency - we gave the process / framework and they performed. And we were able to repeat the success 3 times with results better than any we had achieved on our own.

As we accelerate, we are tempted to delegate stuff which we ourselves are not familiar with. Like writing daily blog posts for example. But then if the work gets done, it is a short term fix because there is no process created. So the results will not be repeatable reliably - which is fine if it is one-off. But harmful if has to go into the company blueprint.