3 RESPONSIBILITIES OWNER SHOULD NOT DELEGATE

                                                              

It's plainly true that leadership starts at the top, and if small business owners want their teams to act in a certain way, and if they want their company perceived in a certain way by customers, they must embody the behaviors they hope to establish," she says.

Another reason it's important for small business owners to handle this task themselves: It's critical to the success of companies both big and small, and the owners of said companies "are uniquely positioned to possess the disparate data points and have the perspective to make optimal choices for the business."

Here are a few other tasks that business and leadership experts say should not be delegated:

1. Overall responsibility

"The reality is, if you're the owner or the CEO or the senior manager or the senior supervisor of a business, the responsibility of everything that happens within that business is yours," says John Bogs, a former U.S. Marine Corps Colonel and current president of Phoenix-based Fortitude Consulting LLC. "Does that mean that you have to do everything yourself? No. Absolutely not," he adds. "But you do have to understand and accept that you’re responsible for everything that happens—or what fails to happen.

2. The development of your immediate subordinates

"Why? Because you need to know they are trained and fully capable of performing their responsibilities, Bogs explains. Leave this aspect of your business to chance, he adds, and "you're likely to see factions develop that will break off and vie for attention” and possibly become a festering wound within your organization. The moral to this particular story, according to Bogs: "You can't 'bring people up' and then leave them alone.

3. Any decision that affects your entire organization                                          
Such decisions are "yours and yours alone," stresses Bogs. "Never give anyone else the authority to make a decision that affects your entire organization," he adds. "That’s a strategic decision by definition, and as such it's yours to make. That doesn't mean you make it in a vacuum, though. You have to gather facts and input before making it, but the final decision has to be yours.