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Continue with Chapter 1Back to overviewWhere do you start? Ask two questions about every task: How often does it come up? And how much is at stake if it’s only 80 percent right the first time?
Frequent, low-risk: start here. Sorting your inbox, research, scheduling appointments, analyzing spreadsheets, drafts of all kinds.
Rare, low-risk: pick these up along the way. The invitation to the holiday party, the checklist for the new trainee, comparing three quotes for new company cars.
Frequent, sensitive: with approval. Customer replies, quotes, social media posts. He drafts, you approve.
Rare, sensitive: the boss’s call, with support. The price increase, the tricky complaint. He prepares everything, and you decide with it all laid out on the table.
By the way, the most common beginner’s mistake isn’t delegating too much, it’s delegating too little. If you only use one quadrant, you’re paying for an employee with a hundred hands and keeping two of them busy.
Use him in all four quadrants, across every area of your business. Feel free to give him several tasks at once; he’ll work through them for you, often even in parallel. And you don’t need to worry that he’ll do something you don’t want along the way. With your approvals, you decide how much you hand off and what he may handle on his own from start to finish. And you get there at your own pace.
The approval principle.
You stay in control because you’re the one who sets it. He can bring you a draft of everything first. That saves you the work, and the final word stays with you.
Whatever you explicitly tell him to do, he does. Everything else that goes out the door, he shows you as a draft first.
Then you feel your way forward and loosen the reins, step by step and task by task:
Level 1 · Everything as a draft. Every outgoing message comes to you first. That’s how everyone starts.
Level 2 · Routine goes straight out. “You can send appointment confirmations directly; everything else still comes to me as a draft.”
Level 3 · Only exceptions. “Send standard replies directly. Anything involving prices, complaints, or new customers comes to me.”
How fast you move up the levels is entirely up to you. Even if you stay at Level 1, you save most of the work.
“From now on, you can handle [task] directly. Keep bringing me everything else as a draft.”
Make it look good, too.
What he brings you doesn’t have to be plain. Very few people take advantage of this so far: almost everything he creates for you, he can also turn into something polished and visually high-quality. Instead of a bare Excel spreadsheet, you get an analysis with charts. Instead of a list of numbers, a presentation you can show your customer or your bank just as it is. You only have to tell him.
Presentations, reports, and forecasts in your look, with charts and images.
HTML presentations that play like a small website: content builds up, numbers move, and there are interactive elements if you want them.
Emails with their own header image, your logo, and clean, consistent typography.
That’s how you raise your standards with him, not just in the content, but also in what your customers get to see.
“Put this together so I can show it to [customers / the bank / my team]: in the look of our website, with charts. Suggest which format will work best.”
Can I tighten things up again later?
Anytime, with one sentence: “From now on, I want to approve everything again.” The levels aren’t a one-way street. Loosen them before your vacation, tighten them again afterward.
Can I see everything he’s done for me?
Yes, and it’s worth it. Ask him for a work report: what he’s completed, prepared, and sent. That way you see in black and white how much he takes off your plate. Easiest as a standing task: “Send me your work report for the week every Friday.”
Every level you loosen frees up more of his hands.
Read everything? Then complete the chapter.
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