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Welcome to Business Leader Breakthroughs where we help unlock the potential in you, your teams and your business. Hosted by Ryan Castle, along with Dr Mike Ashby, we share insights, experiences and stories on achieving breakthrough successes in business and life. In addition to a podcast, The Breakthrough also specialises in delivering management training that actually sticks, is cost effective, and easy to implement at scale to sustain change from the inside out.
Welcome to Business Leader Breakthroughs where we help unlock the potential in you, your teams and your business. I'm your host Ryan Castle along with Doctor Mike Ashby. We share insights, experiences and stories on achieving breakthrough success in business and life. To learn more click the link in the episode show notes or go to thebreakthrough.co Now let the breakthroughs begin. Hey Mike, welcome to Podcast Land.
Mike Ashby:Hey Ryan, good to be back.
Ryan Castle:We really need to work on a new intro, feel like the audience might be getting a bit dull with that one. Should we
Mike Ashby:get I didn't rush it, Ryan. Welcome back to podcast land.
Ryan Castle:That is excellent. It's great to be here. Thanks so much. You leading the intro is great. You've just got yourself a new job.
Ryan Castle:That's good. I was wondering how your special machine to create more hours in the day was coming along.
Mike Ashby:Well, I've pretty much finessed that one. I have plenty of time. Mhmm. And it took some years to to get there, but I do have plenty of time. Mhmm.
Mike Ashby:And it enables me to say, so I mean sometimes things are busier than others, but in general, I'm not busy.
Ryan Castle:And what would be your estimate of the working population that feel like they're in your zone of having available space and available time? What percent do
Mike Ashby:It's know what a single digit.
Ryan Castle:I imagine would agree with you.
Mike Ashby:Yeah. Particularly managers, but pretty much most people. Yeah.
Ryan Castle:I think we've now worked with thousands of business owners, business leaders, and the most common thread running through every conversation I've had is that challenge of too much to do, not enough time to do it.
Mike Ashby:Yeah. Yeah. And actually, I was thinking about this the other day, the kind of flip the thinking from too much to do to you do too much. Because that's usually the problem. You do too much.
Mike Ashby:And people who are kind of, I'm flat out. I've all this work to do. And you go, well, flip it from the work to the business. Because there's a different perspective when you shift that level of thinking. So it's kind of, I mean, it probably sounds quite smug, smarmy, supercilious to say that I'm not busy.
Mike Ashby:Which somebody did call me.
Ryan Castle:Well, call it like that's one of those stories like an overnight success after forty years
Mike Ashby:Yeah. Of hard Yeah.
Ryan Castle:Because that hasn't always been the case and it's probably I know. You've had significant change and that's the way we've set up our business very intentionally. Yeah. Your role in the business now, where we value very much your time as our chief product officer and doing that develop and researching and thinking. We very much intentionally again removed you from the day to day operations of the of the business.
Ryan Castle:So, you know, that's not an accidental outcome and it certainly hasn't been a reflection of your entire working career? Well,
Mike Ashby:it's sort of I on reflection, I was never that great at detail. So I had a natural inclination to delegate. In fact, I was pretty famous for it. In fact, people used to say, well, what does he do around here? But that was because I wasn't yet in a position where my kinda not doing actually made a difference.
Mike Ashby:So I I probably always have had a bit of an instinct. I've always used assistance. You know, when I was in corporate, I would have personal assistant. And I was, from very early, very good at using using them and not doing the stuff that I wasn't good at. That's probably a wee bit of a the achiever as well who is, I'm not gonna do things I'm not good at.
Mike Ashby:I'm just gonna do things I'm good at and can win on. But I've still had to work at it. I've still had to work at creating creating the structures, which meant I did less and less of what I really am not good at. And, you know, operations, running things, administration is just not my gig, my jam.
Ryan Castle:So to kinda dig into three areas there, think the first one is self awareness. You have to be very aware as a leader. What are you good at? Where do you add the most value? And then how do you help?
Ryan Castle:How do others around you help? And it's the delegation piece and we will talk talk more about that. And I think the other one which we've talked about on previous podcast is the importance of priorities. Mhmm. The acknowledgement that there is not time to do everything and you actually shouldn't shouldn't be doing everything.
Ryan Castle:So initially that skill of going, what are the big priorities in our business right now
Mike Ashby:Yeah.
Ryan Castle:For our next milestone, for our long term vision. Yes. And then going, which can I which of those things can I add the most value in? And then how can the team around me around me help?
Mike Ashby:And and there's couple of things there, know, the eighty twenty, which we talk about a lot. The 20% of all activities that create 80% of the value, being clear about those and they are your priorities. And then your point about the team to help you is along with that self awareness about what you're good at, is respecting what others are good at. And realizing that, you know, just because you don't value detail doesn't mean there aren't people who really relish it and are superbative. And that it's incredibly high value.
Mike Ashby:So, you know, you and I both talked about this often. We may not be the world's best on process, me worse than you, but boy do we respect process.
Ryan Castle:Absolutely. Love love process. Yeah. So, Mike, no doubt delegating is great. It's a term we've heard a lot.
Ryan Castle:One of the levers we can can pull. Where do we start in thinking about how we do delegate Yeah. Delegation.
Mike Ashby:Yeah. And delegation sounds like kind of sort of an administrative or a management thing, but actually delegation's really strategic. It's really fundamental to getting your organization to the next level. And it starts it has to start with you decluttering. You as the leader, decluttering and going, okay.
Mike Ashby:Of all the things I can I've got in front of me right here, again, eighty twenty, this 20% produces 80% of the value. This 20% at the other end produces 80% of the clutter and noise and frustration and annoyance and all of that stuff. So it's taking those lower value activities and and giving them to perhaps the next person down in the in the chain, but for them to do the same exercise. They've now got higher value activities, hopefully, and their definition of low value activities has has changed, they drop those. So it's really about we've seen this so often.
Mike Ashby:It's about cascading these down like those bucket fountains in Cuba Street. You know, they kind of tip the they fill up and then they tip out. Well, you wanna create a job as as close to the bottom and have all of those various activities in the in the one place. And then that frees up everybody above them. So but it does start with you being willing to let go.
Mike Ashby:And that's the part that people struggle with most.
Ryan Castle:Yep. And I think one of the barriers to them letting go is that sense that I'm just so busy myself right now and it's faster for me to do that thing right now than it is to teach someone else. We'll talk about how you get get past that. And as we, let's call it, descend tasks in our organizations, also don't forget the value of outsourcing now.
Mike Ashby:Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. So Yeah.
Ryan Castle:You know, we we do this in our team where we know, we we get members of our team to help us with things that they're working on, but we know they're full of capacity. So we're asking them, you know, is there someone else in our organization that can help you? And if not, then what what of this could we outsource? Know, platforms like Fiverr and Upwork those kind of platforms be able to go, actually, that's a 20 or a 30 or $40 an hour task that someone else is more likely to be expert in, have the ability, go and you can, like, capacity on demand, essentially, to continue to delegate that And
Mike Ashby:And don't have that resource when you're not using it. So it's a whole lot more efficient. I I think the only test with that is really about the one thing you don't outsource is anything to do with the customer. But beyond that, you should always ask that question. Do we have to do this ourselves?
Mike Ashby:When you go, I shouldn't be doing this, the next question is, well, do we have to do it internally or can we outsource this? And as you say, the the the technology and the flow of information today is such that that's that's a live question. So but but it does come down to, again, being willing to let go. You know? That kind of I always quote, you loud see.
Mike Ashby:You've heard me say this a million times, you know? When I let go of who I am, I become who I might be. You've heard that one, haven't you?
Ryan Castle:I have heard that one.
Mike Ashby:Yes,
Ryan Castle:yes. It takes my small brain a few moments of processing and maybe a little bit of zen humming just to get on the right zone to take that on board. Lots of incense. But I have heard that one a few times.
Mike Ashby:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So why don't people declutter? Well, because they say, but all my tasks are urgent. They're all important. Or the one I like is that everyone else is too busy.
Mike Ashby:Like, so you will do this really low value thing because you don't wanna interrupt others who are doing equally low value things probably. People will get upset if I don't get these things done straight away, you know, that kind of urgency piece. I think it's just a matter of habit as much as anything. It's kind of, well, I've always done this stuff, you know, so why would I delegate?
Ryan Castle:I'm gonna throw a challenge in here. Oh yeah. I don't think the path to delegation is just about letting go of your low value tasks, what you'd receive for low value. I think is a phenomenal tool to help people in your team grow as well. And sometimes as a leader, you have to let go of the stuff that you find fun that is the thing that does make the difference in the organization.
Ryan Castle:Mhmm. So the organization can grow and other people can develop.
Mike Ashby:That's alright.
Ryan Castle:And we've had that situation in our own team where there's been some things that both you and I enjoy doing, feel like we can but be very influential for the growth of other team members, we've gone actually this is now yours.
Mike Ashby:This is
Ryan Castle:And we've been through our process, and we'll talk about the different types of delegation.
Mike Ashby:Mhmm.
Ryan Castle:But that's an an important part. So I don't think we shouldn't just constrain our thinking to kinda getting rid of low value Yeah. Low value task. Think about it as an opportunity for people to grow. Because when people, team members go, what is it you want from an organization?
Ryan Castle:One of the big things that comes up in every employment survey, every engagement piece is, I want opportunities for growth.
Mike Ashby:I want more responsibility, I want autonomy, and I want opportunities for growth. Want that sense of progress. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Ashby:Look, that's where delegation becomes strategic. And I've just been doing a module in the Active Leader series, is the kind of the next step up from the Active Manager program. And the very first piece is about the leadership mindset, what you have to have as a leader in order to bring people with you, and it's very much about delegation. Delegation to set direction. So when you do that kind of strategic delegation, you are handing over substantive tasks and responsibilities, and you're saying now the point to this is we're headed in that direction.
Mike Ashby:So the first thing is you gotta get clear about what that direction looks like and how this fits and what you want from the person. We'll talk about the kind of capability delegation. But it's a very strategic piece because it forces you to say this is a substantive piece as it contributes to our direction here. The other one is that it delegates delegation to have control. So this is really about people who are accustomed to firefighting.
Mike Ashby:That's not control. Actually, that's the opposite of control. Delegating to people to kind of solve problems for themselves rather than you solving everything, that's when you have time to kind of work out where do these fires come from? You know? So get the others to demand the the bucket chain or, you know, kinda run the bucket chain.
Mike Ashby:You work out why these fires are erupting. You design the systems and processes to ensure that this stuff doesn't happen. So delegation to take control, delegation to set direction, very strategic. And and it's what makes the organization go faster.
Ryan Castle:I'm just gonna reach down and grab my very old drum so that I can beat it yet again. Beat the old drum again.
Mike Ashby:Yeah.
Ryan Castle:And that's the we talk about so often the essential element of having having development time in your in your week.
Mike Ashby:Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan Castle:More, probably the more senior you are, the less operation you are in a business, the more important and larger scale that development time should be. But that is where we take the time to go, what's causing these fires here? What does it happen? How could I write a delegation plan so that I can pass this off to the to the next person? How do I evaluate where I add the most most value?
Ryan Castle:If you are in constant firefighting, 100% busy, 100% capacity the whole time, you're hiding to nothing. Yeah.
Mike Ashby:Yeah. And and for some people, it's chicken and egg. It's kind of, I'm too busy to delegate. And the only way to make that happen is, I guess, to break the egg and say, we'll stop. You know, actually take those couple of hours.
Mike Ashby:Make a start on the delegation plan. Make that start on what do I do that creates the greatest value? What do I do that somebody else could do? What is it that's the what are my $20 an hour activities?
Ryan Castle:And there are very, very, very few businesses in the world that if someone takes a couple of hours out, someone's gonna die. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan Castle:So Surgeon. They they leave the table for a couple hours.
Mike Ashby:Oh, wouldn't work.
Ryan Castle:They normally have time for golf, by observation. Oh, that's true. Not yet. But, yeah. I mean, we we can get very caught up in the importance of our own role and what's going on.
Ryan Castle:Actually, you know what? Stop for a couple of hours. Do it better. No one's gonna die.
Mike Ashby:Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan Castle:By and large.
Mike Ashby:That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We just get so busy with it.
Mike Ashby:We get so caught up in our own kind of busyness. We we take on people's responsibilities. And and actually what can happen is that if we're solving all the problems and we've got all the responsibilities, people rather than put their hand up and ask for more, they just go, yours. You know? As long as you're gonna do it, I don't have to.
Mike Ashby:Exactly. But of course, as we said before, you know, you'll never grow the people that you've got. They'll never learn. They'll never get challenged and stretched. They'll never leave, and things will never change.
Mike Ashby:Mhmm. That's pretty grue, isn't it?
Ryan Castle:It's not a path to greatness, that's No. For the point you make around giving people context is so critical. Think it's a obvious failure of leadership. So often leaders have spent a lot of time thinking about vision, about where the business is going, what the milestones are, and we unintentionally forget to communicate that to And our I had a fantastic discussion with one of our team members this morning. Very little of it was about her role.
Ryan Castle:Mhmm. Almost all of it was about this is where our business is going. Yeah. This is what we're trying to achieve. This is the scale.
Ryan Castle:So when you think about your role that you're doing, I want you to put that lens over it and go, we don't want you to do the role for today's business, we want you to build it for tomorrow's. And you know, that was yet another good reminder of the importance of doing those kind of sessions to bring your team in on where you're headed. I mean, it's fine for us, we can quote it off top of the head. We spend all week, every week thinking about where we're going and how we're gonna get there. We need to spend more
Mike Ashby:time Yeah.
Ryan Castle:You know, giving that
Mike Ashby:insight I've to you I've observed you doing that, and I've observed you even, say, you know, at the moment, we've got a number of new staff and you're training them, which is another way of of another form of delegation a in a sense. But I always always observe I I observe how you always remember to provide context for the task. So this you know, delegation as we use it is not about offloading your dross. Yes. It's not about dumping the things you don't want to do onto somebody else.
Mike Ashby:It is about building capability around you. Even if the task you're giving somebody is a repetitive kind of transaction piece, it's still about building the capability of the organization. Mainly, in those senses, because you're not doing that anymore, so you can step up and add greater value. So that's the, you know, that's the that's the piece in in the growth.
Ryan Castle:And we have both experienced the fantastic outcome of delegating a task, a project, process to someone else, and they do it a lot better than we do.
Mike Ashby:It's a very liberating moment, isn't it, for your ego?
Ryan Castle:It is. It is.
Mike Ashby:Yeah. Yeah. And, no, look, it's it it is. It's wonderful. You go, oh, gee.
Mike Ashby:I I kind of really was just mucking around with this. And somebody who's better at it, you know, when you give them the confidence to have a go, they do it better. It's wonderful. And again, the whole organization sort of moves up in capability.
Ryan Castle:Yep. Mike, where do you think delegation fails most often?
Mike Ashby:I think it's that bit about handing your dross off. Handing your administrivia and your low value stuff so that you can hold on to the sexier stuff. Because people just go, thanks for that. As if I wasn't busy enough, you've now dumped this stuff on me. So the delegation piece is not you know, delegation is not abdication.
Mike Ashby:It's not kind of wiping your hands a bit and saying, no, no more. So there's there's a couple of bits to that. One is to make sure that when you delegate, you are actually delegating things that represent value to people. If there are things that actually nobody wants to do, you should look at either not doing them or outsourcing them. And simplification is always a good thing.
Ryan Castle:So And I'd add to that often automation or process, you know, there's a lot of things that you can that, you know, maybe have been a a challenging manual process or a drudgery Yeah. Manual process that actually can most of those things, can build automation around now to do it better.
Mike Ashby:You you so can. And a lot of stuff that we do, we do because we've always done. And so we keep doing it. So so I think in the first instance, not just abdicating the the lowest value stuff, being clear about it. And then I think also making sure that you're giving people room to grow as well.
Mike Ashby:You might you know, there might be lower value things that that you are going to delegate. Giving them to the right people so that they actually are within their skill sets and represent a little step up maybe, or just more responsibility or confidence or whatever. But the the yeah. It it fails largely because people just resent giving being given more work without explanation, context, or kind of how this relates to me.
Ryan Castle:And I think that application bit is, hey, I've been doing this for three years. I don't wanna do it anymore. I'm throwing it to you. No thought around what's actually involved in this process. What's the knowledge that I have that you may need maybe don't have have yet just kinda chuck in the past
Mike Ashby:down
Ryan Castle:the
Mike Ashby:line and Yeah. Hoping for an guess that's that's right. That's a good way of putting it, actually. The abdication piece is it has two things. One is that it's dross to start with.
Mike Ashby:And second is that there's no help or support. You just get you know, you turn up to work Tuesday morning and suddenly I've got this thing to do. My boss has just given me this thing to do, and I'm doing it from now on. No no kind of help, support, thought about how this work has to get done. Yeah.
Mike Ashby:For sure.
Ryan Castle:So let's talk about we, at the Breakthroughs, think there are two clear types of delegation, task and and capability. Yep. Can you take us through the those two
Mike Ashby:And it's yeah. Look. It's it's it's only one way of cutting it, and some things are a bit of task and a bit of capability. But I I think it's just a useful way of thinking about the two extremes, if you like, and how to mix your delegation process so it's not just application. So with the task piece, that's really about showing someone how to this is something that's maybe repetitive, maybe just has to be done a certain way, is sort of transactional, if you like.
Mike Ashby:You'll take time to show the person how to do it. You will watch them do it, and then you'll kind of progressively step back and let them get on with it. Checking from time to time, making sure they're okay with it. But generally, once it's done, it's signed off and done, and, you know, that that's off your table. So that's task delegation.
Ryan Castle:I've got a good example of task. Milena, I saw her teaching Lisa how to do our learning management system upload of learners. So when we bring a a new cohort of learners on, they obviously have to be added to the learning management system. We have a a semi automated process which allows us to fill in a spreadsheet and upload it automatically. Mhmm.
Ryan Castle:And I saw her do that. She walked Lisa through the spreadsheet. Lisa watched Milena do it the first time, showed it. Mhmm. Next time, Lisa was doing it and Milena was observing it, and then from there on Lisa has been able to take it on and Milena was like, hey, if you have any troubles with us, I'm here to help and we'll just check that the process is going well.
Mike Ashby:Actually, it's a good way to think about it in a way, is that when we think about delegation, we're thinking about that transfer from one person to another. Actually, delegation is about learning. Delegation should be thought of as a learning, a teaching, and a learning exercise with all the benefits that go with it. You know, we should reframe how we think about delegation. It's not an efficiency issue as much as a learning issue.
Mike Ashby:It's a learning process. So, you know, a task that exactly as you've described that example with with Milena and Lisa, there's a learning that's going on, and that's gonna be a different learning sort of learning from our next one, which is the capability delegation. And we've got lots of examples of that too, where, you know, you want people to be able to exercise some judgment. So in the task delegation, there's not necessarily a lot
Ryan Castle:of judgment. It's usually kind of
Mike Ashby:an algorithm Mhmm. Kinda thing. The difference in teaching somebody the capability piece is that it's a conversation. It's it is a learning process. It's a learning conversation, and you will talk with them about it.
Mike Ashby:You won't talk to them. You will talk with them about why this is important, where this fits. It's exactly as you said, you know, what's your role and how does that fit in the context of where the business is going. So why it's important, why you've asked them, and then a little bit about how they might approach it. So at this point, you're asking them, you know, you've given them the background, you've given them the expectations around it perhaps at a high level, and then they need to be thinking about how they would do it.
Mike Ashby:And then you step back at that point in the conversation and start to coach and guide, rather than this is how you do it. You actually want people to engage, and we know that learning's hard, it's meant to be hard, and we want people, you know, if they're gonna kinda be able to take this capability on, it's because they've learned this this role, this function, this responsibility. And we've gotta have kind of respect for that in terms of it's not follow the manual, it's work out for yourself. How does this work? Where do we what sort of judgment do we use and where?
Mike Ashby:So, yeah, look, that kind of delegation, that capability delegation, it's a lot more time consuming for us, and so we use it for bigger and more difficult tasks and and roles. But, again, you know, when that drops down into the organization, frees us up, and we've seen this for ourselves so often and in others so often, freeing ourselves up from those things that somebody else could do. They may even be things we like doing, but somebody else can do them. They have a better day. We have a more valuable day.
Ryan Castle:The thing with capability delegations is they're often almost ongoing. Yes. I think a task delegation can often be quite a short period of time. It might be a one off, it might be a day, a week, a month kind of delegation. It's done, we sorted that person now knows how to do their task, they're doing effectively.
Ryan Castle:Yep. With capability delegation, it might be a small amount this month and a bit more the month after as that capability grows. You don't get capability overnight. No. And the example that came to mind for me was writing the board report for our own board meeting.
Ryan Castle:And I think you having had much more governance experience and insight in doing that has have given me good guidance over actually a series of years. But you've allowed me to put my flavor to what we we do. And in that process, I've been able to delegate probably some of the more task oriented to our to our finance team who now do a lot of preparation of the financials and the Yeah. Dashboard reporting so that I can then focus on the board report. You've been you've allowed my capability to grow over a number of years Yeah.
Ryan Castle:With a little bit of coaching here and a little bit of guidance there and a little bit of perspective from a from a different side, which has really helped.
Mike Ashby:And your own observations about why don't these people read this bit of the report? And it's kind of, well, because it was in last week's or last month's, it was in the months before. So and we're blessed with a very how should we describe the chairman? A very? Insightful and incisive and to the point.
Mike Ashby:Yes. Pretty blunt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Ashby:But it but it's true. That is right. It's a good example of delegation in the first instance, and then that capability continuing to evolve guidance. And that's that's true of all of those forms of delegation and capability growth as you continually kinda provide feedback about this could we could make this better. We could make this better.
Mike Ashby:We can make that better.
Ryan Castle:Yep. Yep. For sure. So I think in summary, get past the fact that you're too busy to delegate. Yeah.
Ryan Castle:Stop kidding yourself. Make some time to spend the time Yeah. To figure out. Think about the type of delegation that it is. Think about whether it's a task or a capability delegation.
Ryan Castle:If it's the task orientation, then typically the process goes, watch me, then I'll watch you, then I'm there to support you.
Mike Ashby:Mhmm.
Ryan Castle:And then the capability delegation, a lot of context initially for why are we why are we doing this? Think of it in the context of how can you help that other person grow through their learning and development in the in the business. Yeah. And then look to approach it by supporting them over the long term to grow their capability.
Mike Ashby:Yeah. Yeah. And and I think that's, you know, it's that idea that delegation is a learning process. And therefore, for the delegator, it's a teaching process. And and I think it's one of the great kind of mindsets of a leader and a manager is to be a teacher.
Ryan Castle:So challenge to you, what are you gonna delegate? Decide one task delegation, one capability delegation. We'd love to hear what you choose to delegate and how it worked out for you. Thanks for joining us today.
Mike Ashby:Thanks. Cheers.