Can a professional services firm improve performance through clarity in expectation setting? Yes!

When I recently read a post from Kirsten Hodgson, a LinkedIn
connection and a marketing expert for professional service firms, titled, “Eight Questions Every Professional Should Ask When Taking New Work Instructions,”   The pervasive though that came through was that establishing expectations with clarity was mission critical when bringing on new clients.  I couldn’t agree more.  Cleary defined expectations agreed upon at the outset of an engagement or on-going relationship are essential if client
retention is one of your key metrics.

See Kirsten’s 8
questions here

It also struck me how similar the fundamental concepts in
those questions were compared to a delegation workshop I routinely deliver titled, “The 2^nd Most Powerful Time Management Tool - delegation for the business professional.”  The workshop
summarizes the ten keys of delegation that I as a Brian Tracy certified FocalPoint business coach use to help improve my client’s productivity and profitability.

Here’s a brief summary of the 10 keys to delegation:

1.      
Focus on your high value activities

2.      
Do what you do best….. delegate the rest

3.      
Delegate based on demonstrated  competence

4.      
Define task clearly

5.      
Set a deadline

6.      
Establish milestones

7.      
Agree on resources

8.      
Agree on consequences

9.      
Put it in writing

10.  
Inspect what you inspect

Notice how clarity and expectation setting are woven into most
of the keys.   So, just as we want our relationships with our clients clearly defined with mutually agreed upon expectations, so do our employees when we delegate tasks, activities and projects.   By following these steps (both Kirsten’s and
mine) any professional practice can improve the performance of their staff which in turn will lead to improve client service. 
 

If you take this back one step even before you delegate you
can dramatically improve you and your firm’s performance.  By following steps 1, 2 and 3, you can
focus your time on the activities that create the most value for you and your
firm.  You essentially will be creating leverage, and leverage is the critical tool to improving productivity and
profitability in your business.  Additionally, your employees will be more satisfied which will increase productivity and decrease turnover.

Start with the 1^st key.   What are
the activities you do better than anyone else? 
What are the activities only you can do?  But you need to avoid the trap that no one
else can do anything that you do.  This
is probably the biggest factor in ineffective delegation.   

After you’ve defined the activities that you do that add the
most value, delegate the other activities to your staff or outsource them (this
is the 2^nd key).    A key
metric I like use here is your hourly rate. 
Ask yourself what is the effective hourly rate want to earn.  Let me repeat, what you WANT to earn not what
you are earning.   By way of example, say
you want to ear $125/hour (that’s effectively $250,000/year). Then for every
activity you currently perform, ask yourself, “Would I pay someone else $125/hour
to do this?”  If the answer is no, then
that task goes on the delegate list.

Lastly, assign the delegate list to your team members who
skills best match the requirements of the task.  There is another key trap to avoid here.  The focus is on whether your staff CAN do the
task, NOT that they can do it better than you.  They just have to be competent enough to do the task.   The key here is to get the lower value
activities off your list so you have more time to do the higher value
activities.

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