I’m going to continue my series on time management by telling you about a client of mine. Piotr Kubalka is the Managing Director of Capital Business Links, an accountancy firm he started 12 years ago. He now has almost 2,000 clients, but the huge growth of his business took a toll on his quality of life. When we met six months ago he was exhausted after working 14-hour days just to keep on top of everything. That’s when he came to me for help.

“I got to the stage where the company was growing and doing really well, but I didn’t have any time to myself,” says Piotr. “One of the first things Sanjiv made me realise was that I was in business to get a better quality of life not just to be part of a business.

“He also pointed out that my role as the owner, was to work ON the development of the business not to be immersed in the daily routines – those should be taken care of by my team. He also gave me books to read, which have helped me master time management.”

Piotr’s client base is so big, he can’t look after each one personally. He needed to restructure his organisation so that not everyone was reporting to him. The best way forward was to divide the company into teams with responsible leaders who could shoulder a lot of the burden.

“I employed a business manager and an accounts manager. Now, all the accountants report to the accounts manager instead of me and that gave me 50% more time. Best of all, the clients still feel looked after, which is really important. I can now spend more time on my business strategy and plan ahead to improve profits.”

“Now I don’t spend lots of time thinking of how on earth I can reply to 200 emails a day – I think about how I can pass them on to someone else.”

Piotr was making the classic mistake of trying to do everything himself rather than delegating. Now that he’s restructured the company, he’s planning to significantly reduce his working hours.

“I’m not as stressed as I was before so that’s made a huge improvement to my quality of life,” says Piotr. “In three to four months, I will be in the position where I don’t have to be at work taking care of daily tasks unless I want to. I can only do that because every member of my staff knows exactly what they are doing. That’s a huge relief to me.”

Piotr has realised the value of letting go and delegating. My view is, ‘what’s the worst that can happen?’ by delegating. If somebody else can do it 80% as well as you can, it is still worth passing them the task. Once you have set up a process, trained and empowered one of your team to own it and agreed targets and set standards, they can continue doing it forever and you reap the benefits.

“Now I have time to spend on other priorities – my family, health and other interests,” says Piotr.