CEOs and founders wanted as beta users for an app that lets you delegate tasks with your voice
--
Dear fellow delegators, CEOs and CEOettes, founders and managers,
Sometimes[1] it’s hard to be a CEO of your own company— I’ve known the pains for the last 4 years when I grew my company from scratch to 750+ clients and had 40+ people working with us.
There are always more tasks than you can possibly do correctly, even if you work as hard as possible. Mastering the art of delegating tasks to others is one of the most useful skills you need to develop.
Unfortunately there is something called Delegator’s Friction that prevents people to enjoy delegating tasks.
That’s why I developed Delegately — a mobile app that lets you delegate tasks with your voice and then send it as a task to your task management tool of choice, like Asana, Trello, Basecamp etc.
Think being able to leave voice messages (like in Messenger or WhatsApp) only the recording link goes to e.g. Assana, assigned to someone as a task with a rough transcription.
I’ve been using it for the last 6 months and I simply love it. Delegately makes my job as a CEO much more enjoyable because it’s the fastest way to get that pesky task out of my system.
Watch a short demo to see it in action:
VIDEO
If this looks like you’d like to give it a try, I invite you to help me out and become one of my beta users—to see whether this app can help other CEOs and founders be better at delegating tasks to their teams.
★Become a private beta user of Delegatly through this link:
❭ http://delegatly.com/beta-users/
To read more about Delegately, scroll below to see why and when I think this solution helps with delegating.
How you put people off while being a CEO?
The biggest problem I had as a CEO was that I sucked at delegating tasks to other people and always ended up with unnecessary problems such as:
1Putting somebody off (usually clients and partners) if I hadn’t delegated immediately when a new task was “born” and they waited longer than needed
2Leaving room for errors for my colleagues like not inputing the tasks in the project management tools when I call them to delegate a task, and then putting myself off because I now have a reason to be angry with my colleagues for forgetting to properly put tasks in our project management tool
3Putting my colleagues off by interrupting them with tasks while they’re working on something else
4Putting my colleagues off by giving them tasks that are now more urgent than they were when they were born
5Putting myself off because I forgot some details once I had finally managed to delegate the task (that also puts off everybody else, of course)
6Putting myself off because I take some task on myself (because of Delegator’s Dilemma) and then hate myself in 2:00am while finishing tasks that I could’ve delegated to somebody else
7Not being able to see which tasks are not completed so I can promptly react to push my team finally putts me off — feelings of despair kick in and you go to bed thinking you are the worst CEO to walk this Earth and probably won’t succeed because you’re an idiot unlike everybody else…
★Become a private beta user of Delegatly through this link:
❭ http://delegatly.com/beta-users/
Why does this happen?
I blame the Delegator’s Friction and Dilemma for it.
Delegator’s Friction is everything that unnecessarily psychologically prevents you to properly delegate a task.
There are many obstacles to effectively delegate something:
1) Not the best time or place to do it
For example, while driving a car — can’t type. #delegatorsfriction
2) Process friction
If one uses a PM tool then the task should added to it = it takes usually at least 5–8 taps and waiting in between for screens to load + typing to enter the task properly etc. = not a seamless experience I need to quickly get that task out of my system and move on. #delegatorsfriction
3) Too much info to type
If a task needs some explaining — it’s better to tell it to somebody in person than to type it out. So managers call or tell in person. Nothing is recorded and expected that the delegatee understood everything the first time they heard it = risk of failure / error goes up. #delegatorsfriction
4) You feel it’s better you do it yourself
If a task is a bit more complex and your team members / assistants never dealt with it before — you feel as if it’s easier that you do it yourself than to spend your energy delegating it to somebody else; even though most of the time it isn’t true since on average it takes 25 secs to delegate most tasks which is less than 2–5min to do a task as simple as sending an email. #delegatorsdilemma
5) Perfecting the art of delegation takes time and practice
Nobody is perfect at it the first time around. It’s important to practice it. As with any habit forming activity, initially it’s hard and you mostly suck at it, making it harder to keep doing it. #delegatorsfriction
★Become a private beta user of Delegatly through this link:
❭ http://delegatly.com/beta-users/
To be a better CEO — you just need less friction.
So the key way for CEOs and managers to become better at delegating is to remove as much of the friction as possible.
That’s when I got the idea for Delegately:
Delegatly is a mobile app that enables people to delegate tasks through voice recordings, in 2 steps with 3 taps, and then sends them, as a playable link, to project management tools like Asana and Basecamp. The purpose is to seamlessly delegate tasks as fast as possible (only 3 taps) to the enjoyment of everyone involved:
First tap: Start the workflow
Second tap: Pick who you are delegating the task to (recording automatically starts)
Third tap: Finish the recording and tap anywhere on the screen to send it. Put your phone aside and move on. Delegatly does the rest of the heavy-lifting.
My solution made the process of delegation an enjoyable experience and thus pushed me to delegate more, become better at it, have better task completion rate and more time for more important CEO tasks. Also, it’s a more enjoyable experience for delegatees because it’s a process that doesn’t put them off.
“I don’t like to record myself / I like to type”
I believe recording a message is the perfect way to get everything out of your system (talking speed is much higher than typing speed) and not worry about grammar, formatting and thinking too much how to explain the tasks perfectly — just start talking and tap when you feel you’re finished.
After a few times you start to feel comfortable and used to doing it this way.
Even if it makes sense to type 90% of the time, there are moments when it’s simply much easier to record the message or task and quickly get it out of your system to your team.
Most of my recordings are 15 secs long, and more complex are topping 5mins. I use it for simple tasks like telling my assistant to send an email to giving feedback on a project my developers have done. I also use it immediately after meetings while the information is fresh.
Who’s it for?
Anybody who would make their job and life easier if they became better at delegating. From first-time founders and CEOs like myself, to managers and even for people who manage their own families (me and my girlfriend use this for our personal tasks).
First adopters would probably be people who use popular PM tools like Asana, Basecamp and Trello already to delegate tasks between co-founders, but ideally who have at least one employee or assistant or are working remotely.
Also, it’s probably not for smaller teams and startups who don’t have much external events that generate tasks and that work all day side-by-side in the same office. It’s great for service providers, managers and founders who deal with clients and engage with customers, partners and so on.
That way the tasks can come out of the blue, they are not working side-by-side all the time and so on, but the founder or manager is working remotely or frequently out-of-office on meetings and other work related stuff.
Tell me what you think about this in the comments, I want to know your thoughts!
If you want to test drive it yourself,
★Become a private beta user of Delegatly through this link:
❭ http://delegatly.com/beta-users/
[1] Mostly always.