For many ambitious and driven entrepreneurs, it can easily seem to be the case that the correct attitude for ensuring long-term professional success, is to be as deeply and intimately involved in every process of the business as possible.

Entrepreneurs who followed this “all-in” ethos tend to embody the stereotype of the workaholic business owner, who gets by on three or four hours of sleep a night, and who spends every waking hour either working, or thinking of new solutions for professional issues.

In fact, however, many of the most successful self-made business tycoons of all time are very keen to emphasise the importance of delegation, and the necessity of avoiding the temptation to micromanage, like the plague.

Here are a handful of reasons why delegating tasks and roles is essential for your business’s efficiency and success – even if you have a deep gut feeling that you have to personally oversee everything that happens in connection with your company.

Because logistical issues are often very complex, and require a specific, expert touch

If your business model is centered around producing a certain type of electronic good, it’s unlikely that you are simultaneously going to be an expert in pallet delivery systems – and yet, those sorts of logistical issues are nonetheless going to be fundamental to the success of your business as a whole.

Put differently; there are a limited number of areas in which you are going to be an expert, and in order to succeed professionally, you need to spend as much of your time operating within your core domain of expertise as possible.

If, instead of using your time and energy primarily within your sphere of personal expertise, you use it trying to juggle and micromanage complex elements of your business operations that you aren’t very familiar with, you are setting yourself up for inefficiency, while simultaneously squandering a good deal of your potential, and perhaps also ensuring that certain things are just done to a lower standard of quality than they should be.

By hiring a professional to handle some of these other dimensions of your business for you, you not only ensure that they are handled to a high standard, but you also allow yourself the space and opportunity required to do your best work, where it really counts.

Because there is never enough time in the day to do all that you might do, even in one very specific role

One major source of anxiety and frustration for entrepreneurs, is the realisation that there is an unlimited number of things they could hypothetically be doing in order to improve the prospects of their business – but only a limited number of hours in the day, in which to do those things.

It may be a difficult fact to face up to, but even if you were to focus all of your professional attention on one very specific niche and role, there are still more things that you could hypothetically be doing, than you could ever manage to do in a lifetime.

Discernment is one of the major skills that all entrepreneurs need to develop, As a matter of practicality. By delegating certain tasks and projects, you ensure that more of the available avenues can be explored in your business, then you, yourself, would have the time to explore personally.

Because the correct role of a business leader is to manage things on a “macro” level, rather than a “micro” one

It might seem like the correct role of a business leader is to have an absolutely crystal clear and nuanced understanding of everything that happens within that business.

In reality, though, it would be more accurate to say that the correct role of a business leader is to manage things on a “macro” level, In such a way as to properly direct all the sub- components of the business towards an overarching vision and goal.

In other words, the role of a business leader is to provide a big-picture structure, and executive function; not to micromanage every little particular that goes on within the business.

Generally speaking, business leaders who get this point are able to move mountains in the pursuit of their particular professional goals, while business leaders who get bogged down in the minutiae end up burning themselves out, and leaving their companies without the overall sense of direction which is so essential for continued progress and innovation.