Document the five jobs that pull you back in most often, not everything. Write each as a one-page checklist with the goal, the steps, what good looks like and who decides, then hand it to one named owner with a number to hit. Start with the job that interrupted you most this week, and finish one checklist before starting the next.

If your business stops when you step away, the cause is usually not lazy staff or a missing app. It is that the way things get done lives in your head. This guide is part of our wider answer to how to get your business to run without you.

Because most of it will never be read. The Theory of Constraints, developed by Eliyahu Goldratt, lists its first steps as identify the constraint, then exploit it before adding capacity (Theory of Constraints Institute, Five Focusing Steps). Applied to your week: find the handful of jobs that keep bringing the business back to you, and fix those before you write a single page about anything else.

Keep a tally for five working days. Every time someone asks you a question, hands you a decision or waits on you, make a mark under the job it belongs to. Your top five marks are your first five checklists. For many owners they look like this:

Your list will differ. Let the tally decide, not this one.

Keep it to one page and write it as the person doing the job would use it. Kevin D'Ambros-Smith teaches this in his Making It Happen training. He points out that McDonald's can have someone running a fry station as efficiently as a two-year veteran within two hours, because the system is clear. In his own warehouse, role sheets for between four and 14 staff meant, in his words, "We weren't trying to teach people on the fly, they had something to follow and refer to."

For anything a screen can show, such as loading a product on your website or entering a job in your CRM, record yourself doing it once and store the video where everyone can find it. Kevin's line: "I do that once, it's there forever." The question you want your team asking is "have you checked the resource hub?", not "can you show me again?"

Every checklist should answer four things: what the goal is, the steps in order, what good looks like, and what the person can decide alone. That last one matters most. It is what stops the job coming back to you.

Give each checklist one named owner and one number. Kevin recommends one to three KPIs for a business or a division, not a long wish list, and warns that "People always take the path of least resistance", so tell people what is expected and then check. Review the numbers at the same time each week. If a job returns to your desk, ask the owner what they think the next step is before you answer, and see why delegation keeps boomeranging back. When a fix does not stick, the 70-20-10 learning model explains why.

"Kevin has the ability to make everything so simple. He can take something that seems like a complicated task and break this down to 1 or 2 key things, so that achieving the desired outcome becomes easier and very achievable."

Christiana Thomson, Johnson&Laird Talent Management

The same method works, but the owner may be a contractor or part-time helper rather than an employee. Write the checklist first. It also makes your own week faster, and it is the first thing a future helper will need.

Not sure which five jobs to start with? Bring your interruption tally to a free 30-minute call and Kevin will help you spot the real constraint.