It’s a glorious sense of control when you handle everything yourself. You answer your calls, schedule your appointments, respond to every email. You’re responsible, you’re hands-on, you’re in control.
What no one tells you is that half of that work isn’t making you a better professional or more successful. It’s just keeping you busy.
The fact is, much of what used to require the professional’s attention now can be effectively delegated. Not because people are lazier, but because they’ve developed systems and supports that are exponentially better than before.
The Phone That Never Stops Ringing
For most professionals (medical practices, law offices, independent consultants, financial planners) the phone is a necessary evil at best.
You never know when it’s going to be an important call. You also never know when it’s going to be a question that could easily be answered on your website. You never know when it’s going to be a robocall or the client looking to reschedule for the third time. But unless you answer the phone, you’ll never know.
Which is why phone management is one of the first tasks that professionals can delegate. A good support person (or team) can answer phones, field urgencies, take messages, schedule appointments, even answer routine questions. The professional only needs to intervene when absolutely necessary.
This isn’t about being out of touch or unable to answer. It’s about being present for things that matter.
The Schedule That Takes More Time Than Appointments Ever Will
Scheduling should be easy; it’s not. It involves a lot of coordination of calendars – who’s free when, who can meet where, who’s got the bandwidth now? It involves countless emails back and forth to find a mutually appropriate time. It involves rescheduling and follow-ups when people don’t respond or fail to send reminders to themselves.
And all that time spent rescheduling and reconfirming takes up more hours – not blockhumps, but annoying chunks here and there which chip away at focus.
Delegating scheduling means someone else does the grunt work. They know your availability, they schedule appointments, they send confirmations and reminders. They handle cancellations and reschedules. You show up when you’re supposed to.
Accountants in tax season. Therapists managing weekly clients. Consultants juggling multiple projects. They all successfully rely on remote support for doctors, lawyers, and other professionals during times like these where schedule coordination isn’t necessarily expertise based but highly important nonetheless.
The Follow-Up That’s Endless
For every conversation there’s at least one follow-up point. Informational requests that were promised. Verification of paperwork received. Checking on outstanding action items. Reminders for next steps.
A financial advisor needs to check in with their client about what’s needed for documentation. A therapist needs to confirm with an insurance company about what’s covered in therapy sessions. An attorney needs to follow up with opposing counsel on filing deadlines. They all need check-ins but none of them require the professional’s specialized knowledge.
A good support person can track which needs follow up, send confirmations, verify things got done, and only escalate when there’s a problem that goes beyond what’s natural under circumstances.
In fact, this level of systematic follow-up usually improves when its delegated since the person who owns this task won’t have ten other things pulling them in another direction.
The Documentation
Updating files, entering information into systems, establishing organizational hierarchies…these are all necessary but rarely require professional-level judgment to accomplish.
From patient charts in a doctor’s office to opened cases in a law firm’s system to client folders at a financial practice, documentation must be accurate and complete. But the act of filling in blanks and organizing does not need to be managed by someone with a JD or MD or PhD.
Still professionals do it – and do it by themselves – because they either get into the rhythm of doing it or they want it done correctly and think no one else will do it well enough.
The truth is, with established processes and proper training, support personnel do documentation just as well and sometimes even more consistently since it’s their primary responsibility.
The Repeated Questions That Get Asked Daily
Every professional gets asked the same questions day-in and day-out.
Do you accept my insurance? What are your rates? How long does x process take? What documents do I need to bring? These questions still need answering but they don’t need your answer. A well-trained support person can handle general inquiries, provide standard responses and recognize when something actually needs your specialized attention.
This isn’t avoidance; this is practicality. There’s no reason to give time and attention to an everyday informational question that isn’t nuance driven but instead something complicated that begs for your judgment.
Communication That Doesn’t Need Your Voice/Presence
Most professional communication is transactional anyway – confirmation of appointment inquiries, delivery of information requested, delivering status updates and coordinating responses between other parties. All this can be done without the professional needing to personally engage.
Support personnel can send emails and make calls and provide updates on their behalf while keeping the professional in the loop without necessarily doing the leg work unless needed.
The Administrative That Just Needs To Get Done
Every office has background work that maintains administrative operations without being operationally useful for clients or patients.
Whether updating contact information or reviewing materials submitted by clients or patients for relevancy to managing files/submitting confirmation approvals/overseeing supplies purchased – these are all important but they’re not what the professional went into their field for – and shouldn’t be what they’re using their time doing.
A dentist should not be managing supply purchases for Oral B products. A consultant shouldn’t be responsible for Salesforce maintenance/upgrading. A psychologist shouldn’t be overseeing insurance claims operational processes.
What Needs Your Attention Personally
What requires personal attention are those bits of work that only a licensed professional with personal knowledge/judgment/support can/should provide.
Everything else – and it’s a lot more than anyone realizes – can be delegated reliably and effectively to someone competent.
It’s not because people can’t do it well. It’s because professionals resist letting go out-of-control because they assume they’re more professional if they do everything themselves – whatever happened to grassroots effort? Control? Trust? Old systems?
The Change That’s Already Happened
More professionals are realizing that their time is their most limited commodity available thus spending time on scheduling minutiae or answering routine questions is better spent on work requiring their particularized proficiency that’s commensurate with their salary requirements for success.
Technology has made remote supports less expensive and more feasible without critical loopholes – improved communication devices improve connectivity tenfold while security protections have never been so stringent for privacy policies.
Thus the stigma comes down – successful professionals know how to delegate with strategy instead of with reluctance.
Can it be done? Yes! Is what you’re doing serving yourself/your work/the world’s workings?
It’s interesting when professionals finally delegate they’ve all said one thing: they wish they’d started sooner – not because they’re lazy but because now they have the time (and brain space) to engage with what matters most as opposed to ticket punching pointless effort that diverted focus from success in the first place!
