HACKER Q&A
📣 oliv__

How/When to Delegate?


Hi HN,

I've been running a SaaS (niceboard.co) for (almost) the last year and have been doing everything (coding, design, support) myself until now.

I feel like I've reached the point (decent revenue + need for features) where I could really use some development help but until now have always worked on projects/businesses myself and have yet to learn to delegate work and manage others vs doing it all.

Any tips on how/when to properly delegate and how to successfully transition from the executioner side to the leadership side?

Any insight is appreciated! Thanks.

  👤 Jugurtha Accepted Answer ✓
Put yourself out of a job. I wrote a bit about it here[0]. It's a bit long, but it also contains links to other posts that may be relevant to you [product, team, alignment, scaling yourself, leveraging your time, communication, roadmaps].

Every single day, you fire yourself because you made yourself redundant. You hire yourself the next day to do something else.

Must the decision be absolutely made by you? If not, delegate. If yes, ask yourself why you're the only one. Are you that special? Find out what's required to make that decision (information, resources, thought processes), lay them out to others, let them poke holes, make the decision. You do that often, they learn how to make them because they have several instances or "cases". Delegate for things that don't have a catastrophic or irreversible consequence. Look for the people who have a track record of making good decisions, delegate to them some more of what you're doing, do something else. Etc, etc.

- [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26182988

👤 jschveibinz
Questions to ask yourself:

1. Where are you most valuable to your business? Where is your time least valuable?

2. Where are you lacking experience or expertise? Where are the holes in your business value to customers?

3. Where are there opportunities for collaborative synergies? How does your business get to the next level?

The answers to these questions will help you to identify one or more opportunities for delegation and/or collaboration. And remember, delegation is also a job—it takes time to work with someone else, so plan for that.

The goal is to get 1 + 1 = 3. If you insist on micromanaging instead of delegating or collaborating, you will get 1 + 1 = 1.5

👤 afarrell
Identify areas of work which

1. Someone else has can build a higher level of mastery than you intend to attain.

2. Are decoupled enough from your workflow that you can describe your mission intent and allow someone to execute with high autonomy.

3. Have enough depth to them that someone can focus on it as a clear ongoing purpose.

👤 afarrell
Definitely do not delegate tasks which are urgent yet actually unimportant to you. You'll be spending your [social] capital in exchange for having a stressed person asking you urgent questions about a task you do not care about. This will harm that relationship.