Of all the parts of the delegation process, this is the one that I love most. When you have achieved successful delegation of your least favourite areas of responsibility and everything is getting done on time (or even faster than before) to a standard you can be proud of, there is no better feeling.

Deciding what to delegate may already be clear to you, and even if it is, the following process is a useful one to put yourself through at any point. I do it every time I take anyone through it myself and it always throws up something of use. My mission in life is to only do what only I can do, so I am very on the case with delegating as much as possible to the right people with the right clarity, training or briefing, standard and measures agreed up front. So what this exercise throws up for me mostly these days is how I can effect change for the better in my life and business by removing anything that sinks my energy and keeping with that which plays to my strengths and keeps my motivation and energy high.

Like any strategy, those supported by an organized plan are the ones most likely to succeed. So here's how to get clear on what you need to delegate and what you can delegate.

Start with a list of all your areas of responsibility and then break them down into subgroups of tasks – the more you can break these down the better. I call it a Task List Profile (Figure 9.1).

Task List Profile

In the first column next to the tasks, go through the list, line by line and (honestly) rank each task in terms of its dependency on you. So if it's something that truly only you can do, rank it H for high. If it's something that someone else could do for you if they needed to be trained up accordingly and monitored for a period to ensure standards and timescales were being met, rank it M for medium. It follows that any task which could easily be done by someone else ranks L for low.

It is important through this part of the process that you are not sidelined by the existence or not of someone to delegate to. It's important not to think of the resources or whether they are present or indeed affordable; the exercise is primarily to identify what could, in an ideal world, be delegated, unfettered by any barriers such as time (to think, train or recruit), money (to pay or lose by virtue of going through the process), trust (what you daren't let go of, even if you know you should) or know-how (how on earth to start handing everything over). I'm sharing my own Task List Profile (Figure 9.1), as it stood when I first started to research delegation in 2013. It's great to look back on for me, as absolutely everything on this list is now delegated apart from those highlighted and, though I periodically revisit my current Task List Profile, the truth of the matter is everything in the second column is marked H and so I've no need to go any further.

I've no doubt that at some point some shoulder-sinkers will creep in but they will not be permitted to stay for long.

Task List Profile second column

In the second column, after the tasks, honesty here is just as important. You now need to rank each task in terms of how much you enjoy that item. It doesn't matter how easy or difficult you find it, and don't be tempted into the ‘Well I don't so much enjoy it, but it only takes a few minutes’ trap. Such tasks have a nasty habit of building up, taking over and draining energy and – guess what? – not being done. If a task is one you adore and something you spring out of bed in the morning for, rank it H for high. If it's something you don't so much mind but it is not your raison d'être, mark it as M for medium or, obviously, L for those tasks that are low on the enjoyment scale – those that you loathe or perhaps like least.

So be honest, and don't worry if you end up with nothing with an H next to it. It may be time to rethink about your life's work or consider a career change. This has happened often when clients go through the exercise; usually, though, it serves as a reminder of why we do what we do, because all the stuff we love is ranked H is a disproportionately small proportion of all that we do. Most importantly, we can see that there is a spread, and where there is a spread there is the potential for delegation.

Between the first and second columns we now have paired rankings, the second for dependency and the third for enjoyment. Clearly, those tasks with an LL next to them are the ones to focus on first. These are the areas least enjoyed and with the least dependency are the easiest to delegate to start with.

Task List Profile with timings

The next stage is either to give thought to the length of time required to complete each task if it is repetitive or at least to estimate the amount of time a person (if not you) would need to attend to it. This is useful in a number of ways. First, when it is a task that is not one you particularly love, it actually takes you a greater length of time to achieve it than a task that you enjoy. We all prevaricate when forced to do something that doesn't make us tick and I've documented that previously in this book, but the fact that you now have to consider how much time someone who is more suited to the task will need, puts into stark contrast how long you would take if you kept the task to yourself.

Second, when you look at it as a task for someone else, you inevitably start to think about by whom or how this could be done and, third, you start to realize just how much of your own time is going to be released once you have dispensed with this area of your working life.

In addition, there are other benefits; once you rid yourself of this shoulder-sinker, you are able to view it from a different angle and will probably be far more able to contribute to its development and play to your strengths than you might have been when down in the mire with it. Let me illustrate:

A case in point here are some items listed on my own Task Profile, that of the business's month end process and accounts Sage entry and credit control. The first took days to complete; the second was usually left until it bunched up, deadlines loomed and we paid more to the accountant to ‘journal’ errors and omissions. It also meant no time for electronic bank reconciliation, which would have saved significant money on having the statements manually double-checked. The third item on my Task List Profile – credit control – was, frankly, very badly done: through the financial crisis, clients had either struggled to pay, gone bust owing too much money to the business or taken advantage of our lax ways and delayed payment for as long as they could get away with. I don't regard myself as a useless or incapable businessperson. I simply had too much on my plate and, ironically, my over-capability (i.e. my ability to work my way around the Sage program and prepare accounts) had led to my not having to delegate the accounting to someone else who would have not been so lax. Most devastating was the point when cash ran so dry that in spite of a debtor book worth tens of thousands of pounds there were insufficient funds to cover the salary payments.

In addition, I had attempted to delegate these tasks before, and part of the problem was that in doing so I had not kept my eye on the ball and realized how bad things had become and how poorly the records now were. My own somewhat time-consumed and not amazing time at the helm of the accounts hadn't been as bad as it could get and now it was in an even worse position. When I assess the episode against the delegation process I champion in this book, I conclude that I hadn't really done anything too wrong: I was clear on the ‘why’ (free up my time), the ‘what’ (all documented and process clear), the ‘who’ and the ‘how’. In retrospect, two things had been lacking: a way of measuring success and being realistic about what we could achieve, which pivoted on one thing: communication. I thought I had the right person who could realistically achieve the role requirements which had very clear measures. In the communication, I was being told what I wanted to hear, and that was all I was hearing. My checking and reporting wasn't as tight as it ought to have been.

However, for me to take it all back would only have solved the short-term problem and so I felt I had to hold my nerve and to learn from this, which enabled the subsequent delegation to be far more successful.

So successful in fact that within six months all records were entirely up to date and fully system reconciled (something that we had never managed before), accounts were ready to be submitted at the half-year point, the whole process taking less than 50% of one person's time and all clients (of which there were hundreds every month) paid up to date. In addition, the management information that resulted within the team enabled a far more simplified and profitable pricing model to emerge. My involvement in this whole process was now reduced to no more than a couple of hours a month, which was all pleasurable, forward-thinking stuff.

One of the most rewarding parts of this process is to prioritize what you are going to delegate and add up how much time you will be left with. Now return to your ‘why’ and indulge yourself a little. There is now a way you can get this time back and do what you first visualized in your ‘why’.

Task List Profile with ‘who’ column

Once you have gone through your Task Profile List, you will be able to identify ‘who’. Needless to say, names are not necessary at this point. It may be an entirely new recruit. But what starts to form is a job description for one or more people or companies. We look in more depth at the ‘who’ in the next chapter.