I want to tell you about a conversation I had with the MD of a construction business recently.
£11 million turnover. Good reputation. A solid pipeline.
And he was drowning.
Not because the work wasn’t there. Not because the team wasn’t capable.
Because everything still ran through him.
Every decision. Every problem. Every task that needed doing properly.
He was the person people came to. The person who sorted things. The one who knew how it should be done.
And the business had grown because of it.
Until that same quality became the thing stopping it from going further.
He described it himself, with the kind of honesty that only comes when someone’s been sitting with something for a long time.
“I seem to have this lock in my head. I don’t want to hand anything over until I’ve got it perfectly worked out - because if my instructions aren’t clear, I’m going to make it worse.”
So he waited.
Until the brief was clearer. Until he’d thought it through properly. Until he could hand it over without room for error.
And because that moment never quite came - the task stayed with him.
Every time.
Here’s what makes this pattern so difficult to break
It doesn’t come from a lack of trust in the people around him.
It doesn’t come from ego, or a desire to control.
It comes from exactly the quality that built the business in the first place.
High standards. Care for the outcome. The knowledge of what good looks like.
And an instinct, developed over twenty years, that if something matters, it needs to be done properly.
The same instinct that made him indispensable made him the bottleneck.
And the longer it went on, the more stressed he became. The more submerged in the operational detail. The further he drifted from where his time and energy should actually be going.
While the people around him - waiting for clear enough direction to step up - stayed exactly where they were.
And yet, in the same session, he told me something else
He’d recently started spending an hour a week with a junior member of staff - working through tasks side by side rather than doing them himself.
No perfect process. No documented brief. Just: sit down, here’s what I do, have a go, I’ll check it.
His words on how it was going:
“She’s already doing more hours than we’d planned. Tasks I particularly dislike are off my plate. It’s already giving me back more time than I’m putting in.”
The imperfect start was working.
More than working... it was compounding.
And he knew it.
Towards the end of our session, he said something that stopped me
His wife had a saying she’d been repeating to him for years.
Done is better than perfect.
He said it with a slight laugh. Then added something that landed harder.
“The truth is, it will never be bloody right.”
He could see it. He’d always been able to see it.
Acting on it - consistently, as a discipline - was the harder thing.
I offered a version of his wife’s line.
Don’t let perfect get in the way of progress.
Because here’s what perfectionism costs in a growing business.
It’s not just the tasks that don’t get handed over. It’s the people around you who never get the chance to step up - because the opportunity to own something, struggle with it, improve, and build confidence is always just out of reach.
The team stays dependent. The MD stays submerged. And the business stays capped at whatever one person can personally carry.
There’s a simpler way into delegation than most founders think
You don’t have to have it worked out before you hand it over.
You can work it out together.
“I’m not entirely sure of the best way to approach this. But let’s sit down and work through it - and then you take it from here.”
That’s not an unclear instruction.
That’s how you build a team that can eventually run without you.
The Question Worth Sitting With
What have you been meaning to delegate - but kept back because it isn’t ready?
Not because the right person isn’t there.
Not because the timing is off.
But because you haven’t got it perfectly worked out in your head yet.
How long has it been sitting there?
What would it mean for your business - and for you - if you handed it over this week?
Imperfect. Incomplete. Good enough.
Because the truth is, it will never be bloody right.
And done is better than perfect.
If that feels familiar, feel free to drop me a message, or book a Free Growth Strategy session below - always happy to share perspective on how others are navigating it.
PS: If this resonated... 'Who Not How' by Dan Sullivan and Dr Benjamin Hardy reframes this whole question. Founders stay stuck because they keep asking how do I get this done, instead of who can I hand this to. Short explainer here - worth 10 minutes of your time.
