The Focus Funnel – What to Delegate

As we grow in the leadership chain, it is paramount to delegate the work to the team and follow through to get it concluded.

Now the question is, what to delegate? Can all tasks be delegated? Of course not. A due diligence is a must to figure out what must be delegated, and during this process I came across a tool called “Focus Funnel”, introduced by Rory Vaden. Subsequently, I started using it and found it helpful.

I used this tool as a decision tree to decide What to Delegate. I put tasks in this funnel, and as an output got the tasks which can be delegated, tasks which I needed to take care of immediately and the tasks which could wait and would later need to go through this funnel again.

The Focus Funnel –?

As shown in the above image, there are 3 key stages in this funnel –

1)?Eliminate – I spend more time here because if there is a task that is not adding any value and can be eliminated safely, then that way, I am saving time for myself as well as for my team. So, I consider it a super critical stage.

2)?Automate – The task which crosses the Eliminate stage means that it still holds value to work on & this is where options are needed to be seen if this task can be Automated. If yes, then again, I am saving time.

3)?Delegate – Now because the task has crossed the stages of Eliminate & Automate, I have an option to delegate it so that my team can work upon it.?

Although if this task can’t be delegated that means I need to take care of it. Now I can take a holistic view of important vs urgent to decide if I need to work on it now or later. In case if it is later then does it still have scope to go through the Funnel again.

This way, my team and I are be able to focus on the most impactful tasks.

This method has a had a pleasantly positive impact on my work, and I would definitely suggest trying this out.

Feel free to share your experience in case you have also used - The Focus Funnel.