779. The Delegation Matrix

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick and welcome to the No Days Off Podcast.

Where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better.

How many things are on your plate right now that probably should not be?

Watch it be honest, because for most entrepreneurs and for most business leaders,

the answer is a lot. A lot of things are on our plate right now that probably should not be.

The reality is you know you should be delegating more. Everybody kind of knows they should be

delegating more. But when it actually comes time to hand something off, we hesitate, we pause.

We ask, is this the right thing to delegate if I'm to delegate to who should I delegate it?

What if they mess it up? What if it's actually important and I shouldn't let it go?

And so what ends up happening, you keep doing it yourself. And that is the trap because you stay

busy doing work that really is not yours to do. And as a result, you don't have enough left in

the tank for the work that actually is yours to do. So today I want to give you a tool that I think

fixes this. It's called the delegation matrix. And I'm borrowing it from a good buddy of mine,

a guy named Jay Papazan, who is the co-author of the book The One Thing. He's also the co-author

of the millionaire real estate agent amongst other things that he writes, including an amazing

newsletter called the 20% or you should all be subscribing to. Jay just put this out in his

newsletter a week or two ago and it really caught my attention because it's one of those frameworks

that I think once you see it, you really can't unsee it. You can't stop thinking about it.

So let's talk a little bit more about this matrix. There are two axes and ultimately four quadrants.

That's all there is here. So picture four quadrants and two axes, be it an x and y axis.

So up and down, if you think vertically, up is impactful and down is trivial.

So how much does this task actually move the needle? Again, from impactful down to trivial.

And then from left to right, you have reversible on the left and you have irreversible on the right.

So if this goes sideways, can you fix it? That would be reversible versus irreversible.

Now where a task lands on those dimensions tells you exactly what you what you should be doing with it.

So let's look at the bottom left. Again, maybe you drew this out or just replay again up to down is

impactful to trivial. Left to right is reversible to irreversible. So the bottom left is trivial

and reversible, trivial and reversible. Things that land in the trivial and reversible dimension.

This quadrant here, this is known as the delegate quadrant.

It's low impact. It's easy to fix if it goes wrong. This should not be on your list as the leader,

as the entrepreneur that we're talking to here at the No Days Off podcast.

Scheduling, data entry, routine emails, ordering supplies. If you're still doing these things,

yourself, stop it. You are spending your most valuable asset, which of course is your time

on the lowest value work that you can be doing. So hand it off, fully hand it off. Don't hover,

don't check in every five minutes, just let someone own it and move on.

That's the bottom left. Now the top left is impactful and reversible.

So again, top left, impactful and reversible. This is what we call the coach quadrant,

the coach quadrant. Because now it matters a bit more. These tasks actually move the needle.

Remember because they're impactful. But if something goes wrong, you can recover. Again,

they're impactful and reversible. So this is where if the task lands in this quadrant,

this is where you develop your people. This is where you assign it. You set clear expectations.

And then you check in at the right moments. And then you let them work,

including letting them make some mistakes, of course, because the stakes allow for it

and the growth is worth it. Again, it's impactful, but it's also reversible. So think about

someone on your team, let's say managing a client relationship for the first time.

Or a new manager running their first team meeting. High impact, but if they stumble,

you can probably step in and course correct. You can turn the mistake even into a lesson.

That's kind of the whole point of this quadrant. You are building capability while the cost

of failure is still pretty manageable. So you don't just hand it off. You don't do it for them.

You coach. Okay. Now we've got the bottom right. The bottom right is trivial, but irreversible,

trivial and irreversible. This is what we would call the train quadrant.

So this one, this one surprises people, I think. Why does it matter if a task is irreversible?

If it's not that important, well, because irreversible tasks, even the smallest irreversible tasks,

create habits, create precedence. So done wrong repeatedly, they actually do become or can become

some real problems. This is how your team handles client data or how expenses maybe get logged or

how complaints, complaints get documented. None of that feels high stakes in the moment,

but if you have inconsistency in this, it compounds and eventually it's going to catch up to you.

So you don't just delegate these casually. You have to build a process. You've got to document

that process and you've got to train people to the standard and then you let the system run.

So what we're trying to do is standardize or create repeatability in this particular quadrant.

Again, the quadrant is trivial and irreversible. And then you have the top right,

and this is what's left over, right? We have top right, which is impactful and irreversible,

impactful and irreversible. And this is the lead quadrant. Bottom line, these are yours.

These are your tasks. Hiring, firing, major client decisions, big financial commitments,

cultural defining moments, anything where the stakes are high and you can't easily undo it.

These are the things that require your judgment or your experience.

Require your accountability. So you can take input. You can bring people into the conversation,

but the decision is yours and the ownership is yours. I think a lot of leaders get a little

uncomfortable right here. They stall or they over-consult or they wait for everyone to agree,

but hesitation in this particular quadrant is itself a, it is a decision.

And it's usually not a good one to hesitate. So own it, decide, and then move.

So one more time real fast here. Trivial and reversible,

delegate it. Get it off your plate. Impactful and reversible.

Coach through it. Develop your people. Trivial and irreversible train for it. In other words,

build the process. And impactful and irreversible, lead it. That is for you to do.

Now, here's the real issue I think this framework solves. Most entrepreneurs are buried in

the bottom left quadrant, doing the trivial, reversible work. And it's because they never built

systems or develop the team to take these things over. And because you're buried there,

you end up being depleted when it comes to do the real work, which is the top right quadrant,

which is the impactful irreversible stuff. I think it's a dangerous place to lead an organization

from. So this matrix here forces you to be honest about where your time is actually going.

And when you use it, your time, when you use this matrix, your time starts going where,

where it in fact should. So here's your action item this week. Okay. I want you to take your task

list, everything that that you're currently doing or that you're responsible for and run each item

through through these two questions. Impactful or trivial with a question mark. So is it

impactful or trivial? Is it reversible or irreversible? Again, two questions. Impactful or trivial?

Reversible or irreversible? And then sort everything on your task list into these four quadrants.

And then make decisions. What gets delegated today? What needs a process built around it? Where do

people need coaching? And what decisions do you need to stop avoiding and just make? It could take

you 15 minutes, a half hour an hour, make your task list, get into the four quadrants.

It's a pretty simple exercise and it could change the game for you. I can tell you that for me,

I just did this with my own task list. And it pains me to say that I had far fewer things that I was

working on in that top white right quadrant and far more things that I was working on in the bottom

left. And that's a mistake. And so now I'm working to correct that. That's all I have for you today.

The note is I'll podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember every single day

brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get out.