Filip Pesek: What Should CEOs Delegate First?

A founder can book a flight in five minutes. What takes longer is keeping the trip in mind while waiting for someone to confirm a meeting, then remembering to move the flight when the meeting changes. On a calendar, that looks like five minutes of work. In the middle of a decision about the business, it can cost a good deal more.

Filip Pesek spent years helping founders grow sales and marketing before he started DonnaPro. He kept seeing the same consequence of a successful campaign. More business came in, more people needed answers, and the person everyone was waiting for was the founder. When we spoke, I wanted to know where he would start taking work off that person’s desk.

Start with the work you can see

Pesek’s first tool is a blank Google document. Write down what you do each day, each week and each month. Include the things that rarely make it onto your calendar: chasing an invoice, following up on an email, arranging travel. A monthly task is easy to miss if you only look back at yesterday.

Then ask where your involvement creates the most value. For the remaining tasks, decide which you can stop doing, which follow a routine you could automate, and which need another person. An office move is one of Pesek’s examples. Someone has to coordinate it. If nobody has that responsibility, the founder can become the project manager by answering one small question at a time.

Give someone the follow-up, too

Consider an overdue invoice. If an assistant drafts the reminder but you still check whether the customer replied, you have delegated the writing and kept the thing that was occupying your attention. A more useful handoff is to agree who will follow up, where they can check payment, and which exceptions need your decision. Now you know when you can put the invoice out of your mind.

That distinction also helps with AI. Pesek uses it himself and says many founders who come to him for an assistant already use it. Once you have automated the predictable steps, ask who handles what comes back. A changed booking or a customer disputing a charge still needs someone who knows the context and can decide what to do next.

Decide what you want the time for

Pesek describes different ways founders might recognise that delegation is working. One could take a family holiday and leave the laptop at home. Another might happily keep working weekends if those hours could go towards a project they chose. The hours saved could be identical. The reason to make the change is personal.

Before your next hire, finish this sentence: “If this handoff works, next week I’ll be able to…” Then choose one recurring task that gets in the way. Give the person taking it on enough context to finish it, and agree when they should come back to you. At the end of the week, ask yourself a more revealing question than how many minutes you saved: did you still have to remember to check?

By Martin Piskoric. Originally published on 21ce.biz.