Five Steps to Making the Best Use of Your Gym Staff and Employees
Many fitness entrepreneurs and gym owners get stuck in the rut of working ‘in’ their business, as the sole person in charge of brainstorming ideas AND creating the plan AND doing the majority of the actual work. In no way is this sustainable, plus it greatly limits their opportunities for the growth and future development of the business. By learning how to truly delegate work and share their responsibilities, both owners and their team will discover incredible improvements in their work and focus.
Owners will find more time to focus on what they do best – designing and creating new opportunities for the advancement of their practice. They may also catch a GLIMPSE of some semblance of work-life balance, or at least a business owner’s version of this. Team members and employees will feel more empowered and will receive a confidence boost from this increased ownership of their work. Overall, micromanagement and excessive juggling will decrease, while creativity and focus will vastly increase. A ‘Win-Win’ in every way.
The Optimal 4D Mix
Business makeover expert and author of Clockwork, Michael Michalowicz, created a workload model which explains that an owner’s main tasks and involvement in their company’s workload fall into one of the following four ‘D’ categories:
Doing – The owner is responsible for actually completing the project tasks at hand.
Deciding – The owner is coming up with the micro-steps for each project and then assigning checklists to the team, often holding onto the job of approving or correcting all work.
Delegating – The owner has passed along full ownership of projects to the team and feels completely confident in their completion of this work.
Designing – The owner has removed themselves from the majority of on-going tasks, freeing up their time to focus on designing new business development and growth of the company.
At DIAKADI Fitness in San Francisco, our entire team recently went through the process of examining our work tasks in an effort to create more efficient systems throughout our work environment. Our main goals were to greatly reduce our management team’s role in ‘Doing’ and ‘Deciding’, while increasing our team’s role in ‘Delegating’ and ‘Designing’. It has definitely taken some additional work up front in order to improve our task training and fully download all of the information necessary for a team member to successfully take ownership of their projects. But using the tips below, I have already found GREAT success in reducing my workload as an owner and empowering my team with the confidence to build and create their tasks without feeling micromanaged throughout the process. It has definitely been worth the investment of time in every way.
Michael Michalowicz’s optimal 4D mix for a company:
80% (Doing), 10% (Designing), 8% (Delegating), and 2% (Deciding).
5 Steps to Improve Delegation Skills
Here are the 5 steps we recommend to improve your delegation skills, streamline your team’s project work, and catapult your creativity and free time for developing and growing your business.
1. CATEGORIZE
Have all members of the team, including management, categorize their own tasks to see how much management involvement there is based on the four D’s (Doing, Deciding, Delegated, Designing).
Example 1: A team member’s project involves responding to new client reviews on your Yelp page. If the team member is responsible for locating any new reviews, but then relies on management to come up with the best way to respond to the yelp review and loops in a manager for the final proofing of the review, then this task should be categorized in the ‘DECIDING’ phase — as management still has an active role in deciding exactly how this task is completed.
Example 2: If a manager is responsible for organizing the content for a monthly newsletter, and consequently, they are writing ALL of the content for this newsletter, then the manager categorizes this task in the ‘DOING’ phase as they have an active role in completing the majority of the work.
2. BRAINSTORM
Once all of the tasks are categorized, take all of the ‘DOING’ and ‘DECIDING’ projects and brainstorm how you can EMPOWER your team member to move onto the next phases of the 4D process. As an owner, keep in mind that assigning projects that play to the strengths and passions of the team members will most likely produce the highest quality work and create a happy, fulfilled team.
Example 1: For the team member responding to Yelp reviews, in order to progress their work into the ‘DELEGATING’ phase, you could work with them to create templates to respond to each type of Yelp reviews. By having an overall template and then catering the response based on their review, the team member will be empowered to respond on their own without having to wait for a member of management to review or guide them through the response.
Example 2: For the manager that is still writing ALL of the content for their monthly newsletter, breaking up each section and then ‘DELEGATING’ out the content to others, will allow more freedom and time to truly focus on those ‘Designing’ new ideas to upgrade your business. The newsletter will also offer a more rounded perspective with a wider variety of expert opinions on each subject.
3. ACTION PLAN
Once you have come up with the idea(s) for progressing each task to the next “D” level, devise an action plan for the rollout of these changes. Some progressions may take several steps in order to truly graduate to the next “D”, so having a deadline driven plan in place with help guarantee the success of the transition.
Example 1: For the Yelp reviews, for the next four weeks of reviews, the manager and team member will work together to build a set of templates for all types of reviews. Then for the next two weeks, the team member could respond to the Yelp reviews, with the manager simply Q&A-ing the work. At this point the team member may be set free to continue the work on their own.
Example 2: For the monthly newsletter, the manager could create a multi-month schedule where they plan out the themes of the newsletters, assigning individual articles to others to research, and build drafts for the manager’s review. This will move the manager to the ‘Deciding’ role. Eventually, over the next few months, the manager’s goal will be to fully develop their team in order to progress to the ‘Delegated’ level.
4. REASSESS
Every 2 months, take some time to re-assess your team’s projects and see how the progressions are going. Are you continuing to EMPOWER them to move through the 4D process with each project? Do you need to create a new action plan for those that are still stuck in the ‘DECIDING’ phase? How is their confidence level? Have you seen a change in how they are executing their projects? Do they still enjoy the projects they are working on and are they truly passionate about the work they are turning in? Reassess, calibrate, take action, and then reassess again.
5. DELEGATE THE DESIGNING
As you create more time to truly ‘DESIGN’ new projects for your business, repeat this process and begin to download the tasks as well as the ‘Design’ work to your team. You will foster an environment that promotes ownership and responsibility with clear expectations on what is needed from each team member. Your team will have more of a focus for their individual projects that makes more efficient use of their time.
As we continue to complete projects and start brainstorming on new ones, we will always come back to Michael’s Optimal 4D Mix to ensure that we are maintaining a healthy balance within each phase. Only then, are we guaranteed to have the time and energy to excel in our creativity and continue catapulting the business forward.
