You built the business, and a lot of the work still ends up back with you.
That’s not because you’re doing anything wrong, and it’s not because the people around you aren’t good enough. Whether you’ve kept hold of the work or handed it over and had it come back, it’s likely nobody’s ever written down how you want it done. This is operational and structural, and it is definitely fixable.
Five questions, two minutes, no cost.
You’ve either kept hold of the work, or you’ve handed it over and it’s come back to you
If you’ve kept hold of it, it’s probably because you don’t trust it’ll be done how you’d do it, or you’ve never had the time to train anyone.
“This is my business. I need to make sure everything is perfect. If I don’t check it and it goes out wrong, it’s my fault, not theirs.”
“I check everything. I always have and I always will. This is just the way it is. It’s just the way I am.”
“I think my team are really capable. I just don’t have the time to train them. If I trained any of my team, they’d probably be able to do it as quick as me. But when do I get to do that? It’s going to take me a week.”
If you’ve handed it over and it’s come back, it’s probably because you’ve never had the time to show anyone properly, or to give good feedback.
“I’ve tried a hundred times to give other people stuff to do. I’m the only person that could do it. It just comes back and the quality is not good enough. I end up reworking it and doing it anyway. So what is the point of giving it to somebody else?”
“As an owner, I just don’t have time to sit down and give my team feedback. I don’t have time to sit and go through everything in detail. I just had to do it and get it out the door. We were under a deadline, and that meant the easiest way to get it sorted was for me to do it myself.”
None of that is wrong. If something goes out wrong, it’s your name on it, so checking it yourself has been the only way you’ve had of making sure it goes out right. And none of it means the business is in trouble. It’s actually probably the opposite.
Here’s why it keeps ending up back with you
When work gets handed over with nothing written down, it comes back wrong. You take it back and redo it, because that’s quicker than explaining it, and it proves what you already thought. Still nothing gets written down, so the next time it’s handed over, it comes back wrong again.
If you’ve never handed it over, it’s for the same reason. How you want it done is only in your head, so nobody else could ever get it right first time, and you know that.
It’s the same with software and AI tools.
“I bought some new software. But it meant writing everything down so other people could use it. I didn’t do that.”
This is not a people problem, and it is not a technology problem. Nobody ever wrote down what right looks like, so nobody else was ever going to get it right.
None of this is because you, or the people around you, aren’t good enough
A lot of business owners I speak to are in exactly this position, and it has nothing to do with you not being a great business owner. This is not about how capable your team is, if you’ve got one, and it is not about how hard anybody works. This is operational and structural, and it is fixable.
I’m not going to tell you to stop checking things. You’re the owner, and I wouldn’t expect you to let anything go out that you’re not happy with.
What changes is where the checking happens. You get it right once, when you set out how you want it done, rather than every time it comes back to you. You’ll get time back as a result, but that isn’t the main reason to do it. The main reason is that you’ll know what goes out is how you’d have it done.
I know what it takes to hand work over properly
I’ve spent 20+ years leading operational improvement across UK and international finance and retail, including running operations through teams based in other countries, as well as nine and a half years running my own retail business with a small team. I know what it’s like to delegate work - I understand how much it takes to do it properly on a big business scale as well as within a smaller business set-up.
Delegating only works when how the work should be done is written down, people are shown what good looks like, and the checks sit in the right places. That’s exactly what’s missing when a handover goes wrong in a business like yours.
Can we get the work to stop needing you? Give me two minutes and let’s find out
Five questions about your business and about the way you (and your team, if you have one) work. You’ll get a score out of 15, some pointers as to why the work keeps ending up with you, and the first thing that might be worth changing to fix that.
It won’t tell you exactly what to do, and it won’t fix anything by itself. What it will tell you is whether the way your business is set up is the reason the work stays with you, and if it is something you can change.
No cost and no obligation.
Who this is for
Owners of profitable businesses in the UK and Ireland.
You’re the owner, and a lot of the work still ends up with you, either because you’ve kept hold of it or because it keeps coming back. You might have a team, you might not. You might be using freelancers, a VA or AI tools to take some of the load. Either way, you want to know that what goes out is how you’d have it done, without having to be the one who checks all of it.
Who this isn’t for
This is not for startups, or for a business that is not making a profit yet.
It is not for employees who check other people’s work. This is for owners.
It is not for anyone with nobody and nothing to hand work to, and no intention of changing that.
It is not for anyone who wants the work done for them. This is coaching, so you end up with something you run yourself.
And it is not for anyone who never intends to hand anything over. If you haven’t yet because it never comes back right, this is for you.