“Delegation is smart. Abdication is dangerous.”
– Jores Minasvand
Delegation is a powerful tool for growth, but there are parts of your business that you can never fully hand off.
In this episode, we share the responsibilities that belong squarely to you as the founder. These aren’t about doing the day-to-day tasks yourself. They’re about staying accountable for the decisions and areas that shape the future of your business.
We cover:
- Why your finances should always stay under your direct oversight
- The dangers of giving away vision and culture before they’re firmly established
- Why you should stay closely involved in key hiring and firing decisions
- The difference between delegating and abdicating responsibility
- A simple way to identify which decisions are “non-delegable” in your own business
If you want to scale confidently without losing control, this conversation will help you focus on the areas that only you, as the founder, can own.
Want to scale without losing control of what matters most? Download our free guide: How to Scale Without Overwhelm here.
“Your culture is too important to outsource. It starts with you.” – Anna Angelova
Transcript for “What Founders Should Never Delegate”
The transcript below was automatically generated. Please ignore any errors or inconsistencies in the text.
Anna Angelova 0:04
Welcome to a brand new episode of More Than Just Task Management, your favorite daily podcast where we help you build a thriving business. I’m Anna Angelova, business coach and consultant. And as usual, I have my fellow co-host with me, Joris Minosfand. Hey, Joris.
Muted. Muted. Oh.
Jores Minasvand 0:27
Hi Anna, how are you?
Anna Angelova 0:29
I’m doing well. It’s Wednesday after all, and we have another awesome topic ahead of us.
Jores Minasvand 0:35
All right. Is it Wednesday or Tuesday? I I lose on my day, so Wednesday it is.
Anna Angelova 0:36
But.
Let’s call it Wednesday, OK?
Jores Minasvand 0:43
OK, I’ll have to plug my laptop in. I’m running out of juice, so bear with me.
Anna Angelova 0:48
Well, while you’re plugging your laptop on, I’ll share what our topic is. And our topic today is what you as a founder, as the business owner, should never delegate. And I know that.
Jores Minasvand 0:53
Alright, go ahead.
Yes.
Anna Angelova 1:04
This episode comes after an episode where yesterday we talked about not micromanaging, not becoming a micromanager. So suddenly we’re telling you, oh, by the way, don’t delegate this thing. So it’s like, no, we’re not contradicting ourselves. It’s just that.
As the business owner, there are things where a certain areas of the business that you will always and should always be responsible and accountable for, which means that even if someone is doing the work.
You need to monitor these things and make sure that they they they’re done properly because ultimately you own the business. It’s your baby and even if it is like even if it is a corporation or LLC like with limited liability and things like this where your person.
The assets are protected. Do you really want to run into problems? Do you really want the business to even go bankrupt? Because there’s so many stories of people who delegated things that should never have been delegated and ended up in a situation where their business was gone. And I think Joris, you have.
A story that that you shared one time about this and like if you want to start with that story and then we can dive into the details.
Jores Minasvand 2:22
What?
The story about.
Anna Angelova 2:27
I think you were sharing one time. You were sharing a story how someone like the accountant or or someone was doing. Oh yes, that’s good.
Jores Minasvand 2:35
Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. This is before. Wow. I’ll have to dig into this one. No wonder I don’t remember. This goes back into 19891990. Before I started, I started my IT career. I worked in a warehouse and then the warehouse was purchased by.
Tool company. This guy was a brilliant, brilliant businessman. Back then he had an idea of importing tools from US and distributing high end mechanical mechanic tools in Canada and as a brilliant business owner.
He focused on just the business and the business grew exponentially. If this was back into the days of the IT where you build a Unicorn and somebody buys you, this guy’s company would have been bought by the.
Microsoft of the world and the Googles of the world. And within everybody was thriving. Everybody was happy. We couldn’t hire fast enough. The business was growing, growing, growing, growing. All of a sudden, ****.
And then the owner actually confided in me that the the controller, the CFO and the warehouse manager, they colluded together to push him out and take over the business. But one smart thing that he had done was all the relationship with the.
The US companies that he was importing tools from was him. So the other companies, they all pulled out and the company went bankrupt. And again, I was one of the most trusted people. So he actually came to me. He gave me the keys and said stay here, everybody’s gone.
All the doors stay inside until people from BDO Don Woody. Back then they were a bankruptcy company. People came from BDO Don Woody. I wanted to give you the keys. They said no, keep the keys. We’re going to need you around here. I was there for about a week.
And yeah, the whole company went the like got liquidated and he started another one later, but he wasn’t as successful. He repeated his business model. The business model was was amazing, but he just needed to keep his thumb on the the the.
The pulse of the finance, he let go of the finance and that’s what caused the problem. The literally this CFO, I don’t know if he sued him after or he could or he wanted to, but he betrayed him.
He gave me all the false information. The company was bleeding. He was actually driving the company down. He was telling the CEO that the company is driving.
Anna Angelova 5:26
Yeah, and it’s we’re not sharing this story to scare you. It’s just an example of what happens when you as the business owner, it’s it’s OK to trust people, of course, like you trust people. You empower people. Yesterday we talked about empowering people.
And all these things. Yet as the business owner, you need to keep your, like you said, your term on the post of the company. You need to know things. And Joris, you already mentioned it that the first and foremost, first and foremost when it comes to what you should never delegate and when we talk about never delegate.
It means never dedicate the responsibility and the control is finances. It’s finances. And yes, of course you can have like four people helping you with finances. Like you can have a have a an accountant, you can have a bookkeeper, you can have a controller, you can have a financial manager, CFO.
Whoever it is, and these people can all help you with the different reports and things like this, but you need to stay as the business owner. You need to stay on top of this. You need to monitor these things and have clarity on what’s going on and.
Understanding that.
Yes, the number that they’re showing you, do they make sense or not make sense and not blindly, not blindly trust. And this is something that we mentioned even yesterday when it comes to delegating well, it is all about.
Inspect what you expect. So finances is for sure one thing that you want to be involved and you want to know what’s going on. Yes, you’re all doing all the work, of course, but you want to know. You want to know what’s going on and you want.
Have clarity and be prepared to have conversations with the people who do the work for you and not get blindsided, not get even lied by them. And it’s really, really crucial. We can’t emphasize.
That’s enough on how control this is. And then the other thing, of course, that you as the business owner don’t want to delegate and should never delegate is the leadership, like setting the vision for the company. Where is it going? In what direction is it moving? Yes, everyday management, things like this, of course.
Especially as your team grows, you hire people who manage things and do things, but ultimately that vision, the B hacks, the culture, don’t delegate the culture. You need to make sure that the culture stays.
Good. And when you think about it, part of the culture is, is the culture is impacted by people, the people that you have in your company. So making sure that you have the right people in your company. And of course, like Joris, we talked before, before we started recording, we talked about hiring, firing some.
Of these things at some point, depending on how big your company is, yes, there might be people who hire and you are not involved in the hiring process anymore. But at some point, depending on how big your company is, if it’s relatively small, hiring and firing, you should be involved so you make sure that the culture stays.
The way you want it to be that the culture is the the one you want to have. So ultimately I would say these are like the three most important things that as a business owner you really want to control and as.
I’ll say level 2 as it sounds like you do want to make sure that your finances setting the the vision, mission and the culture like these are three things that you need to.
Keep an eye on and you need to monitor and you need to know what’s going on and you are the one who leads this. You are the one who’s accountable and responsible for this.
Jores Minasvand 9:37
100% agree and I think, I don’t think there is one set of list of stuff for you to delegate or not delegate. It depends. It’s different from every business, but you need to think about what are the key decision points like finance is one of them.
Hiring of firing people is the other one. Hiring of onboarding and firing customers.
I have fired customers personally where I don’t want to work with this company anymore. It is not worth it. There’s not enough, you know, gold in China to make me want to work with this company. Those decisions are yours.
And and operational, yeah, I mean anything that’s big and and this is what what when we say you disconnect, you don’t disconnect 100% your connection to the company, what is left for you to do are these key decisions.
A a customer is complaining. We have tried to to compensate. They’re not happy. What do we do? You ultimately walk in, check that customer, ask the question yourself. Is or he or she worth it? Is he or she?
Reasonable. And we talked about expectations a few sessions back. You make the decision and then you either satisfy the customer or fire them. So those key decisions you have to keep. I mean, you can’t just go to a seat on a beach and hope that your business will run forever. It won’t.
So absolutely, I think all the key operational decisions will have to be done by you.
Anna Angelova 11:21
Yep. And again, I know it comes on the this conversation comes just after the how not to be a micromanager and now we are telling you all keep track of these. But again, this is not contradiction. It’s because again, you’re not telling people what to do and how to do. It’s just that you are monitoring and you.
Who are making sure that?
Finances, leadership, culture.
Customers like all these things like just like you protect your customers, this way you also protect your employees like you you you have responsibility to both. And I love what you said Jorah is that ultimately like we are giving a few examples. There might be other things again depending on what stage you are.
That you should still keep track of these things and this is more like as you grow for sure, like no matter what stage you are, even even if you have like an 8 figure business, you still want to keep track of these things. And as you said, George, start with thinking, OK, what are the?
The key decisions, what are the key things about the business that make or break the business? And then you need to make sure that you understand what’s going on and you keep track of these things, even if it is once a quarter when you meet with your CEO because you’ve reached the level where you’re not even the CEO of the.
Business, you are just the board, the board member like the direct, like the the board of the business. You just own the business and everyone else does things including like a CEO that that is actually taking your business to the next level.
Even at this stage, even if it’s like once a quarter, you need to make sure that leadership like the vision of the company, the culture of the company, the finances that they are moving in the right direction and.
This is it. Ultimately, as a business owner, the fun never ends.
Jores Minasvand 13:25
Absolutely, absolutely. It’s ups and downs and as long as you manage the key operational components of your business, you will thrive, you’ll be, you’ll be successful.
2.
Anna Angelova 13:45
And if you are in the stages of growing your business, actually check out the guide. We will add a link to to a guide on how to continue scaling without overwhelm. This this would be I think a very good resource to add here. You can check it out.
Out and see this again, especially as you’re growing your business, whether you’re growing it from six to seven figures or from 7 to 8 figures, it would be useful for you to see like those six big pillars and some of those things that we.
Don’t notice on time a few red flags that if these things are going on within your company, you need to fix them as quickly as possible. And actually what we’re sharing, it’s not that much of A guide. It’s more of a workbook in a way because it has a few checklist for you to if you notice some of these things for what.
To do so, check it out if you’re interested. The link is in the description of this episode, and tomorrow we’ll be back with another conversation on technology, and this time we’ll be talking about connecting your tools so they can talk to each other.
And Joris, this is one of your key competencies, so I’m looking forward to our conversation tomorrow.
Jores Minasvand 15:11
Same here. Thank you, Anna. Bye.
Anna Angelova 15:12
Thanks for this. Bye.
