Task Delegation Tips

"I'll delegate when I find good people." Translation: "I'll trust them after they prove themselves." Plot twist: They can't prove themselves until you trust them. Break the loop. Delegate to develop. Here's how: 1️⃣ What should you delegate? Everything. Not a joke. You need to design yourself completely out of your old job. Set your sights lower and you'll delegate WAY less than you should. But don't freak out: Responsibly delegating this way will take months. 2️⃣ Set Expectations w/ Your Boss The biggest wild card when delegating: Your boss.  Perfection isn't the target. Command is.  - Must-dos: handled  - Who you're stretching   - Mistakes you anticipate   - How you'll address Remember: You're actually managing your boss. 3️⃣ Set Expectations w/ Yourself  Your team will not do it your way.  So you have a choice: - Waste a ton of time trying to make them you?   - Empower them to creatively do it better?  Remember: 5 people at 80% = 400%. 4️⃣ Triage Your Reality - If you have to hang onto something -> do it.  - If you feel guilty delegating a miserable task -> delete it.  - If you can't delegate them anything -> you have a bigger problem. 5️⃣ Delegate for Your Development  You must create space to grow. Start here:   1) Anything partially delegated -> Completion achieves clarity.  2) Where you add the least value -> Your grind is their growth.  3) The routine -> Ripe for a runbook or automation. 6️⃣ Delegate for Their Development Start with the stretch each employee needs to excel. Easiest place to start: ask them how they want to grow. People usually know. And they'll feel agency over their own mastery. Bonus: Challenge them to find & take that work. Virtuous cycle. 7️⃣ Set Expectations w/ Your Team  Good delegation is more than assigning tasks:  - It's goal-oriented  - It's written down  - It's intentional When you assign "Whys" instead of "Whats", You get Results instead of "Buts". 8️⃣ Climb The Ladder Aim for the step that makes you uncomfortable:     - Steps over Tasks  - Processes over Steps  - Responsibilities over Processes  - Goals over Responsibilities   - Jobs over Goals  Each rung is higher leverage. 9️⃣ Don't Undo Good Work Delegating & walking away - You need to trust. But you also need to verify. - Metrics & surveys are a good starting point. Micromanaging - That's your insecurity, not their effort. - Your new job is to enable, motivate & assess, not step in. ✅ Remember: You're not just delegating tasks. - You're delegating goals. - You're delegating growth. - You're delegating greatness. The best time to start was months ago.  The next best time is today. 🔔 Follow Dave Kline for more posts like this. ♻️ And repost to help those leaders who need to delegate more.

Founder-led sales shouldn’t stop until you’re hitting at least $1-2M ARR.   At least in my book. Few people - if any - understand the nuance of what a company’s building better than the founder. And if your product is truly innovative, education is a huge part of the selling process. You need to teach buyers, help them understand not just what your product does, but why it matters, how it fits into their world, and what changes because of it. Also, as a founder, you need to hear first hand what your product is missing, where the value is being created and synthesize those lessons. When you’re pitching customers, you get immediate feedback from watching how they react, and seeing where they get stuck. Realizing “This button should be over here,” or “We need an integration for that.” Any of those conversations could offer valuable insights for the next iteration. Palantir does this insanely well—embedding themselves next to customers, solving in real-time, and refining as they go. Once you’ve gone through the cycles—pitched, tested, failed, refined—then you have a real sales motion. Then you can bring in an AE or SDR and hand them the blueprint. But if you delegate too soon, you may be missing out on long term gains. I know from experience! When we first started emailing our music to blogs, it allowed us to improve substantially because we were hitting up writers and not a label press release. We heard first hand what they liked or didn’t about our work or its promotion, and iterated fast. 

Feeling overwhelmed? You're not alone. The answer isn’t working harder 👇 Many leaders drown because they refuse to delegate. Not because they’re incapable — but because they care too much. Here’s the framework I coach leaders to use: 1️⃣ Start with self-awareness. ↳ Am I truly the only one who can handle this? 2️⃣ Evaluate risks objectively. ↳ What’s the worst that could happen if I delegate? 3️⃣ See delegation as development. ↳ Who would benefit from leading this? 4️⃣ Build safety nets. ↳ What quality checks will ensure success? 5️⃣ Communicate clear outcomes. ↳ What does 'done' look like? 6️⃣ Set healthy checkpoints. ↳ When will we check progress together? 7️⃣ Empower ownership. ↳ Which decisions can they own? 8️⃣ Celebrate growth moments. ↳ How will we recognize their success? 9️⃣ Coach first, then delegate. ↳ What knowledge do they need to succeed? 🔟 Invest your freed-up time wisely. ↳ What will I focus on now? 1️⃣1️⃣ Simplify your meeting load. ↳ Can this meeting be an async update? 1️⃣2️⃣ Eliminate busywork. ↳ What low-impact task can I stop? 1️⃣3️⃣ Spot emerging leaders. ↳ Who can make decisions confidently? 1️⃣4️⃣ Track and adjust. ↳ How will I know delegation is working? You deserve a calendar that serves your leadership, not one that buries you. ❓ What’s one task you know you should delegate but haven’t yet? ♻️ Repost to help more leaders escape calendar chaos. 👋 Follow me (Dr. Chris Mullen) for more leadership frameworks that work.

I became an Amazon VP because I was a leader; I did not become a leader because I held the VP title. Leadership came first. Here is how you can improve your leadership even if you are not a manger at all: Some of you may know the famous story of Tom Sawyer, written by Mark Twain. In the story, Tom is given the hot, dirty, boring job of white washing (painting) the wooden fence in front of his house. When his friends walk up and say, oh Tom, poor you, stuck painting the fence, he says ohh no, this is important work and none of you could do it well enough to be allowed to do it. Tom cons his friends into wanting to prove that they can paint the fence well. Then he gives them the brush and sits back while they fight for turns to do it. My dad was generally a pretty negative guy, and when I was looking at graduate schools he commented that I was "pretty good at getting others to whitewash my fences," a reference to this story. He was skeptical of my ability to succeed "on my own." He undervalued the value of my ability to inspire others to action. Most people think that only managers can delegate. That is one of the reasons why most people don’t become managers. You have to delegate to focus on the important work and move up. Here’s how: Each of us has tasks we love and things we are naturally good at. Most of us also have things that we really dislike or that we struggle to do well. The key to good delegation is to ask people to do things they like or that are easy for them. So, the key to delegating well is being able to identify those things. Once you have identified the tasks that someone likes, one way to delegate to them is to trade tasks. Find someone who is good at a task you are bad at, and then ask what you can do in exchange. In the ideal case, both parties will end up doing something easy, quick, and fun for them that was frustrating and difficult for the other person. Then, this will create a virtuous cycle. As you delegate more of the tasks you don’t excel at and take on more tasks that are easy to you, you will become more productive and focus more on what is important. This willl generally make you a higher performer and more valued in whatever it is that you do. As a result, you will be able to start requesting help with your projects and you may even be asked to lead a project or a team. In this situation, you can begin to delegate away even more of the things that you don’t like because you will have the official authority to do it. If you are not a manager, another delegation strategy you can use it to ask your manager to assist with delegation. If your manager values your focus on a certain type of work, they may be willing to move some of your other work to someone else. But, in order to make this happen you need to show them that this will pay off for them and for the overall team or project. Readers- Have you had experiences delegating as non-managers? Share in the comments below.

I recently spoke with an early-stage AI app founder who was desperate to hire sales reps because he dreaded founder-led sales. This is one of the most common failure modes I see with technical founders—and it significantly impedes the path to product-market fit. Here's how to think about the right order of operations in early sales motions: Phase 1: Prototype & Validation In the earliest stage, the feedback loop between customer conversations and product roadmap must be extraordinarily tight—making founder-led sales absolutely non-negotiable. This phase is critical because you're identifying your true ideal customer profile (ICP) and learning how to effectively communicate your product story and address common objections. As you accumulate hundreds of demo repetitions (while refining your product based on feedback), you gradually assemble a winning process. Phase 2: Founder-led Sales Scale-Up Your mission here is to create the sales playbook that will guide future reps. You need sufficient pattern recognition to understand which messages resonate with which personas. I recall meeting Desmond Lim, CEO of Workstream, several years ago (not an Emergence portfolio company, but I deeply admire what they've built). He showed me the remarkable 60-page playbook he crafted documenting their entire sales process—before hiring a single AE. Every nuance. Every objection. Everything a new rep would need to succeed. While perhaps extreme, this perfectly illustrates the principle: scaling go-to-market requires mastering your ideal sales motion before delegating it. Phase 3: Hiring Initial Sales Reps Most founders default to sequential hiring—start with one rep, evaluate results, then proceed. However, we recommend hiring 2-3 sales reps with diverse backgrounds simultaneously, enabling you to effectively A/B test different profiles. Regardless of approach, ensure these early hires are "renaissance reps" with rapid iteration capabilities rather than purely "coin-operated" sellers. Mark Leslie has a great foundational article on the Sales Learning Curve provides excellent guidance. I'll link it below. So embrace the early sales work, even when it feels uncomfortable. It's fundamental to building a foundation for lasting success.

Want to get more done in less time? Put the Eisenhower Matrix to work. People often confuse being busy with being productive. But the truth is, we spend too much time on the wrong things. This tool helps you focus on what actually matters, By sorting your tasks into four simple categories based on urgency and importance. Here's how it works: 1) Do First (Important and urgent) Overview: ↳ Tasks that demand immediate attention and are critical to your goals ↳ Tied to deadlines, crises, or time-sensitive responsibilities Examples: ↳ Completing a project due today ↳ Fixing a system outage affecting customers ↳ Prepping for tomorrow's high-stakes presentation How to Do Them: ↳ Prioritize these above every other task ↳ Avoid multitasking on anything else ↳ Set specific time blocks to finish them quickly 2) Schedule It (Important but not urgent) Overview: ↳ Tasks that support long-term success but don't need to happen today ↳ Includes planning, learning, and strategic thinking Examples: ↳ Researching automation tools to make you more efficient ↳ Meeting with your mentor to talk about career direction ↳ Creating a roadmap for your next product launch How to Do Them: ↳ Block time on your calendar and treat it like a meeting ↳ Break them into smaller, manageable steps 3) Delegate It (Not important but urgent) Overview: ↳ Tasks that feel pressing but don't need your personal attention ↳ Usually tied to someone else's priorities Examples: ↳ Responding to routine customer service requests ↳ Reviewing non-critical reports ↳ Booking travel for an upcoming event How to Do Them: ↳ Assign these to someone else on your team ↳ Provide clear instructions and expectations ↳ Only follow up if necessary 4) Delete It (Not important and not urgent) Overview: ↳ Tasks that drain your time without adding real value ↳ They distract more than they contribute Examples: ↳ Checking social media without a clear purpose ↳ Sitting through meetings where you're not needed ↳ Over-polishing a simple internal deck How to Do Them: ↳ Don't ↳ Recognize where you're wasting time ↳ Cut these tasks from your schedule ↳ Set boundaries so they don't creep back in Use the Eisenhower Matrix to focus better, Waste less time, And accomplish more of what really moves the needle. Have you worked with this before? --- ♻️ Repost to help your network be more productive. And follow me George Stern for more professional growth content.

The delegation mistake I made as a young CEO In my first company, I gave out tasks in passing. “Please handle this.” “Take care of that.” No context. No clear outcome. No follow-up. So of course, results didn’t land. At first, I blamed the team. But the truth? I was the problem. I didn’t explain why the task mattered. I didn’t define what success looked like. I didn’t have a rhythm to review progress. Once I started using Scaling Up, everything changed. I learned to: ✅ Give direction with context ✅ Set clear expectations and success criteria ✅ Establish a rhythm to review data and progress That’s how you build a self-managing team. Without it, you’ll stay stuck being the bottleneck. Your team doesn’t need more orders. They need structure, clarity, and trust. That’s how execution scales, when your team stops guessing and starts owning. ♻️ Repost to help other CEOs delegate with clarity. P.S. Do you give context when you delegate?

One of the toughest things as an early stage SaaS Founder is knowing what you should own and what you should delegate... Here are the five stages I've guided Founders through... 0) Pre-Product Market Fit This is the stage where you don't really know who your ideal customer is, you don't really know what the differentiated product is, and you're looking to make magic happen. This is the stage you should own everything. The biggest thing to optimize for? Customer Conversations. More Customer Conversations means more Insights, Greater shots at goal, and greater chance at revenues. 1) Initial Revenues Congratulations. You've got something. Except you don't know if it's repeatable. Maybe you got that one lucky customer from your network on a sweetheart deal, or that random lead that bought. Now you need to prove that you can do it again, and again, and again. The biggest thing to optimize for? Customer Conversations. Keep owning. 2) $100K ARR OK, we're cooking here. You know what you're selling. You know what the product is. There's so much more to be done. But you obviously need more. What got you here won't get you to the next stage. Now is the time to build a scalable GTM Machine so you can get into more customer conversations. The biggest mistake to make here is to delegate this out, but quite honestly, no great Marketer is going to join your $100K ARR startup and take the risk, so you have to embrace Founder-led GTM and build your GTM machine. 3) $1M ARR Only 4% of companies reach this point. Congratulations. You're awesome. Now is the time for you to hire people who will own the Sales Process (that you've proven), the Marketin motions (that you've battle hardened), and maybe even a few more Engineers and a Product Manager. This is where delegation to DO-ers comes into play. 4) $3M ARR (and beyond) This is even more rarified air. You're now owning the Vision, the Culture, you've got DO-ers running the playbooks, you're starting to see repeatability. Now is the time to bring on some great VPs who can take each of the key pillars (Product, Marketing, Sales, Success, etc) to the next level. Keep delegating, but own the thing that you're the Top 1% of the world at. The key lesson all this? Until you've started to prove repeatability, don't delegate. Keep owning and prove out each of the pieces and then delegate the playbook. As the playbook gets run and you get more momentum, use it to recruit great Leaders. But -- still own the one thing you're the Top 1% in the world at. How does this journey start? It starts by embracing Founder-led GTM because that is the key to success, to product market fit, to repeatable revenues and it's the one thing you cannot delegate. If you're a SaaS Founder aiming to accelerate your path to $3M+ ARR and beyond, grab a complimentary copy of my 5-Point SaaS Growth Strategy Guide. It's exclusively crafted to help you build a scalable Go-To-Market Machine. Follow the link in the comments below to grab your copy 👇

The most important tool I deploy as a manager is the "Task Relevant Maturity" (TRM) framework. TRM enables me + my team to get the right support based on *each task* I delegate. When done right, it supercharges output & empowers the team. Let's dig in ↓ An easy mistake for managers to make is to assume a high performer at one task = a high performer at all tasks. At some point, this unrealistic expectation will bite you or your high performer in the 🍑. TRM is a framework that helps managers account for variations in skill level that *any* team member will have. It calls for providing support based on a team member's experience & confidence with any task vs. an overall perception of their performance. Here's how I use it ↓ Whenever I delegate a new task to a team member, we have the same convo. First, we gauge competence: Have they done this task before and have they done it well? Then, we gauge confidence: Are you excited about this task? Different answers = different types of support from me. Example: Let's say a team member is really excited about doing a task they've never done before. They're low competence (it's new!), but high confidence (enthusiastic). To support them, I'll be very directive but give them tons of space to tackle it on their own. On the other hand, if I'm delegating a task to somebody who is high competence (they've done the task a lot!), but low confidence (...so they're bored with it), I'll do more coaching. I'll map the task to its impact – not just for the company, but for the team member's career. It took me a long time to perfect the implementation of TRM (I needed lots of practice 😅 ), but the results for my team have been 10x that effort. Team members are able to level up their skills and can get more work done while feeling good about doing it. It's worth it.

The 4 most important #questions to ask yourself if you are to master #DelegatingWELL 1. Why must I delegate! The simple response is, how #far do you think you can walk carrying a load of 100ks on your head? Not far, right? In the same way, if you want to lead for long and not suffer #burnout, you are going to learn to delegate! 2. What should i delegate? This depends but my usual take is; A) #breaking down the task in order of important duties and this then helps me what I should do as a leader, and what I should delegate to others. Sometimes it’s the most important or #delicate part of the assignment. B) Other times I consider what part of the assignment I know #someone else on the team can do a much better job at. Being a leader means getting the best people to do the best job. Not trying to do everything yourself. C) Sometimes I will consider which part of the assignment aligns with #where I am going in life. I have learnt to concentrate my energy on that which is connected with my destiny. This means there are moments I delegate things that fall outside that path but are in line with another’s destiny. D) Things that will take a lot of my time but bring #less results. Sometimes being busy does not mean being productive. Pick your battles well and let others also put in their weight in certain parts of the assignment. E) There are times I will delegate a task to another team #member because I know it will help them grow. Even though I know it’s something I can do, if I realize it will help someone on the team grow, I will sometimes delegate that task. 3. When should I delegate? I am one for delegating #early! And this is for two reasons: A) it brings others in early enough so you can get the task done #faster and B) it helps spread the effort needed to fulfil the task so you do not# burn out. Do not wait to be overwhelmed before you can think of delegating! As soon as you have a clear picture of the assignment and what has to be done, start thinking who should do what! 4. Who do I make sure delegation brings results Keep a #Bird’sEye on everything. This does not mean uncomfortably peeping over people’s shoulders. Set times to #report back on progress from the person/people you have delegated to. That helps to ensure things do not slip through the cracks and that you keep on track in terms of time. Are these things you usually consider? Which of them stands out for you? Cheers 🥂 to building teams that last and win Jose