How to codify and delegate everything.
Since launching the DFY Delegation sector of my business 18 months ago, we have onboarded over 100 VAs, built dozens of playbooks to multiply operational leverage, along with hundreds of processes and SOPs.
But most importantly, we’ve created a model where processes & personnel can work cohesively to help Founders buy back time with minimal back-and-forth required.
In a hyper-reactive world imbued with the hustle culture, I hope that by sharing the principle and frameworks behind how we approach delegation, I can help at least one of you reclaim the time freedom you deserve while achieving more.
🔑 For starters, it all comes down to pattern recognition.
This is the key that will allow you to not just delegate manual step-by-step actions, but also your Decision Making Algorithm.
Up to 95% of our actions are habitual, and since our business is built through our actions, we’ll unconsciously develop a certain way in which we approach daily operations.
The key to delegating everything, is to develop a process to recognize and codify these habitual patterns.
For example – let’s say you want to delegate email management.
At first glance, it might feel super hard given the number of micro-transitions and micro-decisions you have to make every day just to stay on top of that endless barrage of messages.
But by codifying the way you tackle your inbox habitually, the task can be delegated quickly & effectively.
📧 Back when I was still doing my own emails, this is what I’d always do:
1. Scroll through every new email
2. Mark all newsletters as read apart from ones I actually read
3. Download any receipts & pay any invoices
4. Respond to everything that can be responded
5. Leave everything as unread to review/respond to later
🧠 Just from the above steps, a few actions can be codified:
1. How I categorize each email
2. How I treat each email according to the category it falls under
3. How I respond to emails that need responding
✒️ This then allows me to delegate each action to my VA in stages:
Stage 1 – Categorize each email and organize them into folders
Stage 2 – Backtrack how each email gets dealt with according to its categories
Stage 3 – For emails that have been responded to, recognize any scenarios that occur repetitively (i.e. Clients asking for resources, meeting reschedule requests…etc)
Stage 4 – Study my responses and turn them into templates.
Stage 5 – Have my VA draft responses for me, all I have to do is review + click send.
Stage 6 – Have my VA respond to certain emails independently.
Putting this into practice, I don’t have to explain how I do everything step-by-step in order to delegate tasks to my VA.
I just have to train my VAs to develop pattern recognition as a SKILL.
To codify the “trigger” for a task → followed by the “decision making process” behind how the task should be dealt with → followed by the “execution” of the task itself.
For the record, I don’t write my SOPs and nor should you. Do this instead:
- Record yourself doing the task with a tool like Loom, Tango or Scribe
- Have your VA turn it into an SOP
- Make sure “if/then” scenarios are mapped for every decision point
- Review it and see if it accurately describes how you’d do the task
- Have the VA independently do it for you at a set cadence
- Ongoingly get time back from never having to do the task yourself again
Again, if you can delegate DECISIONS to your VA instead of just manual step-by-step actions,
you’ll inevitably unlock an infinite supply of time by ongoingly delegating anything that doesn’t give you a satisfactory return-on-effort.
(Obviously, you’ll need a VA who’s actually good. But we’ll leave that conversation for another time)
If you’ve skimmed through this whole post but aren’t exactly sure how to implement this practically,
go grab a copy of my Email Management SOP and study it as an example.
Here’s the link to the Email Management SOP
P.S. Thanks for investing your attention and making it all the way to the end. If you have any questions or takeaways, do share them in the comments and I’ll get back to you!