Words: Richard Branson. This article appeared in the June/July issue of Your Business.
Ensure that you’re doing what you do best, and leave the rest to others…
It’s all about finding and hiring people smarter than you. Getting them to join your business. And giving them good work. Then getting out of their way. And trusting them. You have to get out of the way so you can focus on the bigger vision.
There is a story told about a famous golfer who was well known for not being able to play out of the rough. When asked during an interview how he split his practice times he said it was always 90/10%. The journalist nodded sagely saying: “I expect that the 90% of your practice time is spent on improving your game out of the rough,” to which the golfer replied: “No, I spend 90% of the time practicing to make sure I don’t get into the rough in the first place.”
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for persistence, in fact I actively encourage it as a core tenet for success. But there comes a time when you have to step back and ask yourself if you are helping or harming your race to success by insisting on doing something that (to be honest) is really not your forte.
Know when to take a step back
It’s challenging as a leader to take a step back and to admit that you aren’t the best person to get something done. Sure you can probably work it out, given enough time. After all, the theory says that if you put enough monkeys at typewriters, eventually one will bash out the script for Hamlet. So surely you can work out how to write the software to run the organisational leave budget. The real question is: should you be doing it? Is there not someone in your organisation who is better equipped to handle this task? Is this the best (and by best we mean most efficient) use of your time?
The ability to recognise that you aren’t the right person to get something done takes self-awareness. You may like to think you can be all things to all people, but at some point, you will have to admit that you aren’t great at everything and there are skilled people who can handle these tasks.
As the leader of your organisation you are probably its most expensive resource. This means that the opportunity cost of you doing what could be done by someone else is enormous. Sure there are things that no one else can do, responsibilities that only you can handle. But there is also no doubt any number of tasks that can be handed over to other people in the organisation. If you have hired correctly and surrounded yourself with people who are responsible, accountable, and just plain marvelous at what they do, you should be able to trust them to get the job done.
Practice letting go
Entrepreneurs are notoriously bad at ‘letting go’. Often they have started their businesses from scratch, doing everything from sales and meetings with top-level execs to buying the tea and dishwashing liquid. Too often entrepreneurs end up double-checking everything and everyone and lose focus of the big picture. They have the vision, they have the know-how to be out there talking up the business, and they have the people who can do their jobs and keep the business running on a day-to-day basis without them; what they don’t have is the ability to let go.
As a business owner, you need faith in your people to let them do what they do best so that you can lead efficiently. Know what you are good at; what you should be doing, and know what your employees are good at and what they can handle. Surround yourself with people who have 
the skills to do what you don’t do well, and then have the confidence to trust them to do it. Sure they won’t do it your way every time, but is that really such a bad thing? You may even learn something.
Jules Newton founded Avocado Vision in 1996. Her passion and expertise lies in people development, interaction and communication, particularly in training collar workers.
Don’t ignore these questions
1. Are you too focused on day-to-day survival to ask the important questions?
Business leaders need to be open to being challenged if they want to succeed in an era of low growth. This starts with being prepared to look inwards and ask the difficult questions that are fundamentally important, but often neglected because you’re too busy with day-to-day survival.
2. What would the world miss if we ceased to exist tomorrow?
Businesses that want to retain their competitive edge in an environment where slow growth has been projected need to have a very clear sense of purpose. This starts and ends with adding value. If you are not adding value to your customers, then why would you exist?
3. What are our values and does everybody in the organisation know and share these?
An organisation can have the loftiest of purposes and be adding tremendous value to its customers, but if its vision is not properly communicated to its team, it will flounder. Common values can play a key role in building a cohesive organisation, where everyone is pulling in the same direction.
Each employee is an autonomous agent, taking responsibility for her behaviour but understanding the common goal. The manager is the coach, sharing their experience and motivating employees to reach their best potential.
4. Do we know what our limitations are?
If you don’t know what your limits are – how can you move beyond them? Excellent organisations spend time identifying their limits – be they environmental, personal or structural.
They know which ones they can control and which they can’t so that leaders can, with a clear vision, build resilient organisations and teams that know where they are going and why they are going there.
5. Are we a learning organisation?
Managing and working in challenging times requires an adapted set of competencies for people. Some of the elements to consider include how to manage complexity (not out of complexity), how to manage diversity, in respect of multiple solutions and multiple truths, and how to be comfortable with paradoxes.
In addition to formal learning opportunities, successful organisations need to find ways to use daily experiences as learning experiences, to use reality as a large field of experimentation.
A learning environment is a vital tool for building resilient and positive teams as well. Barbara L. Frederickson writes of the need for a presence of positive emotions (such as passion, joy, enjoyment of certain tasks) as opposed to stress, trauma, or fear. An organisation in which employees take pride and joy in their tasks, or feel praised for their work, will be more resilient.
5 Are we really invested in change?
An organisation can do and say all the right things, but if it is not really invested in change, it won’t move forward. Change is of course intimidating – but it is essential.
The reality is that there will be challenges in the environment for some time. We can’t control many of the external factors, but there is much that we can control – including how we approach the situation. We need to ask ourselves the difficult questions with curiosity and be open to change. Then we can build resilient and successful businesses no matter what the growth forecast.
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