When you delegate, you empower someone else to act for you. The act of delegation, then, involves conferring (some of) your functions or powers on another so he or she can act on your behalf.
You can see from the definition why delegation is so problematical for so many small business people; delegation involves giving some control away. Couple that with the fact that many business people believe that no one else is going to do it (whatever it is) as well as they do it anyhow, and you have a group that's very resistant to delegation.
Delegation is a critical skill for small business success, however. No one can be good at everything, and running a small business involves so many different tasks and skills that some sort of division of labour becomes necessary for survival. To learn more about what to delegate and improve your delegation skills, see Let Go & Delegate!.
Other ways you could divide the labour include getting a partner, hiring employees, and outsourcing. What’s the difference between delegation and outsourcing? Semantics, mainly. Outsourcing involves purchasing goods or subcontracting services from an outside company. The word isn’t freighted with the idea of giving up control. In practice, delegation and outsourcing are often indistinguishable.
