“Delegate the outcome, not the process”.

Sounds nice.

Simply speak an outcome into existence, and watch it come to be without the time and energy suck that delegation usually is.

Too bad “delegating outcomes” rarely works when it comes to delegating to your Assistant.

Your Assistant is your jack-of-all-trades generalist admin ninja, usually handling deeply personal tasks on your behalf.

Stuff you’ve probably never delegated before.

So yeah, it’s different than delegating to a specialized employee whom you hired to do what they’ve always done before at other companies, at your company.

In fact, not being able to “delegate outcomes” to your Assistant is why most people give up on having an Assistant altogether.

They find that it takes just as much time and energy to delegate something as it does to do it themselves.

Thankfully, there’s a delegate with a high level of control without it taking up too much time and energy.

First, an example…

How I Delegated My Email

My email is a mess.

Each day when I get to work, I want to be able to open my email and see the 3 or 4 that actually matter to me for that day.

The “delegating the outcomes” principle would tell me to ask my Assistant to make this happen.

But there’s a problem — what does this mean? Which 3 or 4 emails matter to me? How would she know?

The most experienced Executive Assistant may have an idea for how to organize my inbox. But no one but me knows which emails are important.

This logic exists as a subconscious algorithm in my head.

The task at hand, therefore, is to get it out of my head and into a repeatable SOP (standard operating procedure).

But “buying back your time” doesn’t look like spending a bunch of it build SOPs.

“Feedback Loops” are here to save the day (and save you time & energy).

Building Systems via Feedback Loops

Using SOPs and feedback loops, my Assistant and I were able to have the best of both worlds when it comes to delegating outcomes and processes:

• I was able to expend minimal time and energy explaining how to organize my email inbox (just as I would if I only had to delegate outcomes)
• My Assistant was able to understand which emails were important (just as she would if I would have delegated the whole process to her)

Step by step, here’s what this looked like:

Step 1: Define the outcome (Me)

I told my Assistant that I want her to clean up my inbox each day and surface the most important emails that I need to respond to.

To get more specific, I said that we need to build an SOP for triaging my email inbox.

We have an SOP template she uses for all our SOPs. At the top, each SOP defines:

• The “Task” of the SOP: “Triage Aaron’s email inboxes (work and personal) first thing, each morning”
• The “Purpose” of the SOP: “Make it obvious for Aaron to know which emails are most important, allowing him to ignore everything else.”
• The “Trigger” for this SOP: “Jed (my Assistant) is to triage Aaron’s inbox first thing, each morning before Aaron check’s email.”
• The “End State” for this SOP: “Aaron’s email is clean and organized. He know’s exactly which emails he needs to respond to and nothing falls through the cracks.”

Usually I’ll have her start with a blank SOP template and fill in these 4 meta items, then I’ll review and make any corrections to clarify the outcome.

Step 2: Create the plan (My Assistant)

We’ve defined “what”, but the “how” is up to my Assistant. At this point, I’ll ask her to create a plan for how she’ll triage my email inbox, which I can review.

Practically, this means she’ll take a first stab at building out the “Triaging Email” SOP (or use the one FreedUp built 😉)

In this case, this means she’ll decide which email labels to use, etc.

When she’s finished, I’ll review her first pass.

We’re shooting for the first version of this SOP to be ~60% correct as we’ll refine it through our feedback loop.

Step 3: Commit to a feedback loop (Me & My Assistant)

THIS is where the magic happens.

I don’t have to build a perfect SOP for my Assistant to use.

My Assistant doesn’t have to have the kind of talent which would create the perfect “email triage” SOP.

We just have to be committed to making it better, over time.

Practically, we do that through a weekly meeting that we both commit to NOT skipping.

Part of that weekly meeting agenda is to review SOPs that have the status of “implementing” (part of our SOP board in Notion).

“Implementing” SOPs are responsibilities that my Assistant has that she is still receiving feedback on, week over week.

So each week, during our meeting, I’ll tell her how she did in triaging my email and will correct any mistakes she made and share preferences.

THIS is how my subconscious algorithm of preferences is reverse engineered.

Instead of my actively thinking of how to explain how I think this should be done (which takes a TON of energy), I get to passively give feedback on her work to inform her of what she’s doing right and wrong.

In this way, she automatically learns my preferences, over time.

Step 4: Document the results (My Assistant)

Now my Assistant will use this feedback to update the SOP. This is how she “saves” our progress.

What this may look like:

• Week 1 - Initial SOP is built - is 60% accurate.
• Week 2 - Feedback is given - the SOP is 80% accurate.
• Week 3 - Feedback is given - the SOP is 95% accurate.

At some point, we move the status of the SOP from “implementing” to “rolling”.

When it’s set to “rolling” it means that I’ve given sufficient feedback, have monitored her performance and now trust her to handle it without oversight.

Eventually, 80% of the work my Assistant does will be in using SOPs that have gone through this process.

Why This Works: Delegate Outcomes and Commit to Feedback Loops

You may say, “wow, this seems like quite the process - how is this the same thing as “delegating the outcome?”

The purpose behind “delegating the outcome” is:

1. To be less work for you
2. To allow your Assistant to use their brain

As we said, the problem is, tasks like “email triage” are not that straight forward and require quite a bit of oversight from you.

But the method above requires minimal energy from you.

You’re:

• :a) defining the outcome
• b) committing to give feedback

That’s it.

Thanks to this “delegation system”, your Assistant is doing the rest.

Most quit because they do the first part (delegate outcomes) but aren’t patient enough - and don’t have a plan for - feedback loops.

The Bottom Line

Delegating outcomes does work - just not instantly.

It works when you commit to feedback, build the system together, and trust the process.

Don’t give up too early.

That’s all for today.

See you next Friday!

— Aaron