Day 1: Identify what you do

Hello and welcome to Day 1 of the Busy Lawyer Bootcamp on the art (and practice) of delegation.

Grab yourself a stack of Post-it notes and let’s get started!

Today, you’re going to learn two things:

1. What’s efficiency
2. What you ACTUALLY do every day, so you can identify where you’re wasting time.

1. What’s Efficiency

We’re going to look harder at efficiency in the livestream. For now, just keep in mind that efficiency means managing your time and workload so that YOU are doing the work where YOU add the most value (for your business, your clients, and yourself).

The ONLY way to do this is to delegate as much as possible of the stuff that doesn't add value or gets in your way.

If you’re solo, don’t worry. You can still delegate. Over the course of this week you’re going to discover how you can get the right people doing the right things in your practice even if you don’t have a team now.

2. What do you do?

The first step to finding MORE time is to identify, visually, how you are spending your time and on what. Armed with that knowledge, you’ll be able to make the right decisions about what to change, and you’ll have a solid foundation for your delegation plan.

Today, you’re going to create a list of all the routine tasks you do every day.

For now focus only on the business and administrative tasks involved in running your practice, your firm, or your department.

You can apply the exact same strategy to legal work, too, but for now, think of everything you personally do that is not billable.

When you’re ready, grab yourself a pile of sticky notes. You’re going to have a Post-It Party!

Daily Action: The Post-It Party

Take 10 minutes to brainstorm all of the business and administrative tasks that you do.

Include daily tasks and things you do less frequently. Write them all down on individual post-it notes and stick them up on your wall or a window.

As you go through the rest of today, every time you think of another task, jot it down on another sticky note and add it to your wall.

Write down everything, no matter how small or insignificant it seems. Checking email. Entering an expense. Scheduling a meeting. Updating your calendar. Recording your time. Reviewing a pre-bill. Chasing a client for information. Answering a cold call.

Watch the Video

We take a deeper look at efficiency, utilization, and why delegation is the key to your profitability. 

End-of-Day Review

At the end of the day, stand in front of your wall of sticky notes, review everything you’ve captured so far, and think of any other business and administrative tasks you typically do but just didn’t do today. Maybe it’s archiving a file, sending an invoice, or making a collections call.

Capture each on a separate sticky and add it to your wall.

Accountability

Grab your phone, snap a picture of your wall, and share it in the Facebook group!

Day 3: Choose What to Delegate

In the last two days you’ve identified where you’re losing time in your day. You’ve categorized your tasks using the Delegation Quadrant:

Quadrant 1: Things you need to do

Quadrant 2: Things someone else could do, and you dislike doing

Quadrant 3: Things someone else could do, and you like doing

Quadrant 4: Things you need to stop doing altogether.

Ready for the next step?

How many times have you thought about delegating a task and decided it would take you too long to teach someone else to do it?

How many times have you said, “it only takes me a minute…I’ll just do it myself”?

If you’re wasting time on a 1-minute task that you do 5 times a day, every working day, that’s 20 hours across a year—and that’s assuming you don’t work weekends!
​

It’s time for a mindset shift

You need to think about saving time the way you think about saving money. It’s like compound interest…the little things really do add up.

Think about training someone to take on a new task, or developing a checklist or template for someone to use as an investment. It will take you time. Accept it. But also recognize that it will pay you dividends

Delegation won’t be perfect the first time, or even the second time. But the time you invest is time well-spent. Once your task is being carried out correctly by someone else, you never have to do that task again. You save that time in perpetuity.

The next time you’re thinking it will take you too long to teach someone to do the little things, have a look at this chart from XKCD. It shows you how much time you can spend across 5 years making a task more efficient—or teaching someone to do it for you—before you’re losing time.

And before you tell me 5 years is too long, ask yourself how long you’ve already been in business, wasting time on that little task; and how long you’d like to stay in business, never having to waste that time again. I bet it’s longer than 5 years!

Daily Action

Your goal today is to choose 3 small things you’re going to delegate.

It's tempting to get the really big stuff off your plate first. We get it. But we also want you to succeed. Start small. Not only do the little time savings add up, they’re faster and easier to implement.

1. Look at your Delegation Quadrant and focus on Quadrant 2.

2. Pick 3 small things from Quadrant 2 that you want to delegate.

Why just from Quadrant 2?

Because Quadrant 2 contains the things you really don’t like doing. The first time someone makes a mistake in a task you've delegated, you'll be tempted to take a task back. You’ll be LESS likely to want to take it back if it’s something you dislike doing yourself!

3. In the unlikely event that you don't have 3 small things in Quadrant 2, you can choose tasks from Quadrant 3 as well. But, these will be harder for you to delegate because you enjoy them. It's just too easy to justify keeping them!

And that’s it!

Accountability

Once you’ve picked the first three tasks, jump into the Facebook Group and tell us what you’ve decided to delegate!

Watch the Video

​We’ll be answering your questions and talking a little more about the taking a "small changes work" approach to delegation AND improving your practice.

What’s Next

Tomorrow, we’re going to look at options for WHO you can delegate work to.

We’re going to share a PDF packed with ideas and resources for outsourcing work AND tell you how you can access over 3 hours of free virtual assistance and get a special deal on virtual receptionists’ services.

Take a few minutes now and watch the Live.

Day 5: Quick Delegation Process

Let’s recap where we are. If you completed yesterday’s Daily Action then you now know to whom you’ll delegate each of the 3 tasks that you’ve selected.

Hopefully, you remembered to post your plan in the Facebook Group. If not, take a moment and let everyone know.

Now that you know the WHAT and the WHO...let’s talk about HOW to make that delegation work.

Your success depends on HOW you delegate. You need a process that increases the chance that your work is done right and your delegation is successful.

Create Your Delegation Process

Follow our 5-step approach to delegation.

1. Track what YOU actually do

For each new task you want to delegate, track exactly what you do now to accomplish the task.

Your goal: reduce what you do into a written process—a series of clear steps—that someone else (your Delegate) can easily follow.

We’re not asking you to write a novel. Just jot down the key steps for what you do and how you do it.

2. Record all the information needed at each step

For each step, include the information your Delegate will need. For example:

• Where do they find the inputs
• What resources do they need (e.g. a template, a system, or an app)?
• Where do they save or store the output of the task?
• To whom should it be delivered and how should it be delivered?

You can keep track of the steps on a pad of paper, a Word document, or even a note on your smartphone.

We build them as checklists in Trello (and we’ll talk more about how we use Trello in today’s Livestream!)

3. Test your process

Once you’ve completed and reviewed the list of steps and instructions for the task, test it yourself the next time you undertake the task.

Start at the beginning and follow your written process exactly. Can you follow it? Do you get the right outcome?

If yes, great!

Now you need to test it on someone else. This may be the person to whom you delegating the task or it may be someone else in your office.

We usually test complex processes on each other before we delegate them.

So, if Karen’s described the process she wants our VA, Holly, to complete, she’ll get me to run through the task using her instructions. If I can’t follow them (which definitely happens, because Karen and I think completely differently), then she knows she has to change the instructions.

4. Tweak your process

No matter who tests your process, you’ll need to accept that it will take you a few tries to get the instructions right, especially if it's a process you do more than once but NOT regularly. But the effort always pays off.

5. Walk your Delegate through the process

Invest the time to take your Delegate through your process. Make sure it works for them and answer any questions they have.

And don’t be afraid to let the person who’s now doing the work tweak your process.

You do NOT need to own the process once you’ve delegated it. In fact, you’ll likely find that your Delegate will make the process even better than you could.

Daily Action

Your assignment today is to pick one of the three business or administrative tasks you want to delegate and create your list of instructions following the approach we just outlined.

​Here’s a link to a Trello Board that Karen created. Make a copy and build your process in there!

Then review and test your instructions.

Once you’re satisfied that your process is clear and complete, contact your Delegate and assign the task.

Take a few minutes to review the instructions with them, be sure they understand, see if they have any questions, and then let them run with it.

Bonus: Onboarding Checklist!
If you’re bringing in a new virtual resource, follow our Onboarding Checklist to make the process as smooth as possible. Download it by clicking the button at the bottom of this section.

And remember, start with the expectation that it’s going to take some time to get the delegation right.

Accept that what you delegate won’t be done perfectly the first, second, or possibly even the third time.

Once you’ve got the process right and your Delegate has a good handle on the checklist, guide, or template you’ve provided in support of the delegation, the time you save will pay you back in perpetuity.

Accountability

Tell us what platform or system you’re going to use to build your checklist. Let us know in the Facebook group.

Watch the Video

We talk you through our 5-step delegation strategy and show you exactly how we build processes using Trello. We'll also share stories of building our team and how our Practice Accelerator Members are approaching delegation to grow their practices.

What’s Next?

If you apply what you’ve learned about delegation this week, you will find more time…time that you can invest in building a more productive and profitable practice, which, after all, was our starting point.

The question is, where do you go from here?

If you want to build a more profitable and productive practice, with less stress and more time to do what matters in your business and your life then here's what you do.

1. Join the Practice Accelerator Membership
2. Identify where you are on the Practice Accelerator Success Path
3. Follow our step-by-step proven roadmap to a better practice

The coaching and skills that you need to create a thriving practice—and the freedom to do what matters to you—are all available to you inside the Practice Accelerator Membership for only $99/month (or $990/year).

Build a better firm...faster!

Click here to join a global community of lawyers and a team of coaches committed to your success.