Before we talk strategy with any new client, we ask for something humbler: a fortnight of their diary, tracked in half-hour blocks, each block graded.
The four grades
A — only you. Setting direction, pricing policy, key hires, big customer relationships. B — you for now. Work someone could do with training you haven’t given yet. C — not you. Work someone in the business could already do today. D — nobody. Work that shouldn’t be done at all: reports nobody reads, meetings without decisions, driving that a courier could do.
What the audits show
Across the two-hundred-plus audits we’ve run, the typical owner of a £1m–£3m company spends under ten hours a week on A-work — and between fifteen and twenty-five on C and D. That C/D block is your growth budget. It’s already paid for. It’s just being spent on the wrong things.
Moving the blocks
Don’t try to delegate everything at once; it fails and confirms the belief that “it’s quicker to do it myself”. Pick the two biggest C-blocks. Write the standard for each on one page — what done looks like, what to check, when to escalate. Hand each to a named person with a fortnight of overlap. Then, crucially, fill the recovered hours with named A-work, or the vacuum refills with email.
When Dave Padley did his audit he found nineteen hours of quoting and scheduling — C-work wearing an “only I can do this” costume. Getting it off his desk is half the reason his net margin more than doubled.
The audit template is a free download at any workshop, or start with the Terrain Survey — the Owner’s Freedom section will tell you how urgent this is for you.
WRITTEN BY
Neil Garside — Founder & Head Coach. ILM Level 7 Diploma, Executive Coaching & Mentoring · EMCC Senior Practitioner.