The Wize Way

Episode 161: Maximising Productivity: The Delegation Strategies You Need to Know

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 2 • Episode 161

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In this episode of The Wize Way Podcast for Accountants and Bookkeepers, Kristy Fairbairn sits down with Jamie Johns to unpack the real secret behind his 7-hour workweek: delegation done right. 

Jamie shares how true delegation goes beyond assigning tasks — it's about micro-training, documenting, and playing your team to their strengths. He explains why systems, checklists, and policies aren’t just operational tools but foundational elements for empowering your team and delivering consistent results. 

Whether you're struggling to let go or want your business to thrive without you, this episode offers a blueprint for building a truly self-sufficient team.

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2. Need to Hire right now? Book a 1:1 FREE discovery call with our WizeTalent hiring coaches to help find your next team member the Wize Way – Click Here

4. Book a 1:1 Wize Discovery Session – Spend 30mins with our Wize CEO, Jamie Johns, a $7M firm owner who is ready to give you his entire business plan to build a firm that can run without you – Find out more here

Kristy Fairbairn:

, if we could just touch on that a little bit more today for the attendees, that'd be really great, yeah, delegation it's the most important, I think, technique or tool or skill to learn.

Jamie Johns:

You know, Dr Stephen Covey, in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, talks about the importance of delegation. Delegation, he says, is it's the most important thing to both personal and organisational growth. But the core of delegation is really that human interaction that, you know, Dr Covey calls interdependence, and interdependence can only be activated by independent people. So, you know, independent people can do things themselves, but when you get two or three people together to achieve a goal or an outcome, that's interdependence. And what does that really mean? Well, essentially, what it really means is that you have to micro train people. You know, I hear all the time that people say to me oh, my staff can't do it like me, my staff or my team, they lack the skills, they lack the experience, they lack the attitude and I've heard it a thousand times and you know if you can relate like put your hand up and I was the same, but there's only so many years that can go on where you know you blame external circumstances for a lot in life.

Jamie Johns:

So you've really got to understand that in order to help people do their jobs or clone yourself, if you like, is that you literally have to get in the trenches with them. So you've got to be able to sit with them next to you day in, day out, record exactly what you're doing, document like a document, exactly what you're doing, so that they understand and you understand what the objective is in the task that you're doing. And if you look at the five steps of delegations, the first step in delegation is what they call what's the desired results. What are we trying to achieve here? So the delegation is a very personal, I think, transfer of knowledge from one person to the other.

Jamie Johns:

But business is complex. So you have to document everything that you do and make sure that you know the person that you're delegating to has the natural DNA to do their job. So, for example, a client manager would need the DNA of having you know interpersonal skills. You've got to be able to like people you know, but some people aren't like that. Some people, Kristy, just love doing the work. Like Ed Chan says, play to their position. Yeah, doing the work, like Ed Chan says, play people to their position. Yeah, and the role of a coach, that's if you own your own firm or if you're a senior client manager and you're in a leadership position, you have to become a coach. Now, a coach is harder than, obviously, being a critic, and it's all so harder than sort of being, say, a captain. A coach has to see the potential in people and develop that potential.

Jamie Johns:

And the more that you can document, get people in the right position on the field, the more that you can document in detail what they have to do, you'll help them achieve success. You know, documenting is very important. Creating policies and procedures is very important because that then will reduce errors. You know, there's a thing everyone can look up called Six Sigma. You know, basically it's a business concept that means so many errors per transaction or so many errors per iteration, and the way that you reduce errors and the way that you increase the quality of the outcome is by systems and policies, and procedures. And there's another book that you can look up called the checklist manifesto and it's basically about a study in the us where a lot of patients in hospitals were dying or getting very ill and soon as the author came to the hospitals and consulted to them, they established policies and procedures because what was happening was patients were getting the wrong medicine, they were getting too much medicine or not enough medicine and people were dying Pretty serious, deadly serious yeah.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Yeah.

Jamie Johns:

So they brought in this that's what the book's about the checklist manifesto.

Jamie Johns:

So they developed checklists and had people follow policies and procedures, and then, you know, people stopped dying.

Jamie Johns:

It's a bit like another analogy is pretend that you go to work every day and you're flying a 747 with 300 people in the plane and you're following all the checklists because if you don't flick one button, people's lives are at risk. So again, the policies and the procedures are very, very important. And when do you make those policies and procedures? The one hour a day that I said you know, and then the key to that is then communicating the policies, procedures, and communicating the checklist to the people that are important. And the best way to do that is with your daily huddle or your weekly meeting, or your monthly board meeting. People sort of ask me what do I do one day a week at sky accountants and essentially at its core, that is approved policies and procedures over and over and over and over yeah, it's such an important part and I really love the way that everything intertwines with micro training comes down to systems and processes to follow and teach to your team.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Freeing up your time comes down to tracking where your time is being spent and creating policies and procedures to then delegate that work, and you know. It also empowers your team members to be successful in their roles because they've got systems that support them. You've identified what seat they should be in, where they are in their greatest state of flow, and then making sure they have systems to support them. The clients get the greatest outcome because the work is consistent. It never skips a beat, no matter who's doing the work. It's such an intertwined part of your business, isn't it, of getting those processes in place, because the ripple effect is across all of it.