By 9:30 on a Tuesday, the owner of Alturra Studios has answered eleven messages. Where the spare mats went. Whether a member can freeze for two months. Who is covering the 6pm at Old Town. Whether the Riverside desk can refund a class pack. None of them needed the owner, and all of them came to the owner anyway.
Alturra is the invented house example on this blog: three sites (Downtown, Old Town and Riverside), 240 members at $169 a month, a Director called Theo, a manager at each site (Noor runs Downtown), a front desk team and a roster of instructors. The owner hired all of them but never handed out the jobs, so every question still travels to the one person whose name is on everything. Here is the owner's week, hour by hour.
Fifty of those 58 hours went to jobs that belong to someone else, and three went to work only an owner can do. This piece is how to hand the fifty out.
Delegation in one minute
- You are the inbox because no job has another name on it. A title is not a job. Until a job carries one role's name, every question about it comes to you.
- Recurring jobs get a role; one-off jobs get a note and a day. Map the first once; hand out the second as it comes.
- Check one list, not people. Read what you handed out at a fixed time each week, and never quietly redo it.
| The work | Who gets it | How |
|---|---|---|
| A recurring job · cover, supplies, the desk rota | one role, on the job map | once, with a standard and a limit |
| A one-off with one right person | that person | by name, with a note and a day |
| Something each person must do | everyone it applies to | a copy each, so you see who hasn't |
| Something done once by anyone in a role | that role, at that site | the first to take it has it |
| A nice-to-have | the team | open to anyone; it waits |
| Goals, money, your leaders | you | kept on purpose, at a fixed time |
Why does every question still come to the owner?
Because no job has anyone else's name on it. A studio can have a Director, three managers and a full desk and still route every question to the owner, because a title says who someone is, not which jobs are theirs.
Take the morning's messages. The mats are a supplies job, the freeze a member exception, the 6pm a cover job, the refund a money limit. Nobody was ever given any of them, so each person with a question asks the one person certain to know, and every answer teaches the team to ask again.
Two habits keep it that way: doing it yourself is quicker this once, and nobody does it quite your way. Both feel like saving time. Both guarantee the same question next week.
What to do this week:
- Log seven days, to the hour, and group the hours the way the first figure does.
- Mark the groups only an owner can do. Expect a short list.
Which jobs should a studio owner keep?
Four: the direction, the money above your limits, your leaders, and the relationships that expect the owner. Everything else can carry another role's name, even the jobs you do best today.
- Direction: the goals, the budget and the prices. Others propose; you decide.
- Money above the limits: a lease, a big repair, a new role.
- Your leaders: hiring the Director and managers, and an hour a week with each.
- The relationships: the landlord and the bank.
Teaching and floor time can stay too, if you keep them by choice; Alturra's owner kept three classes a week. And one owner job makes the rest possible: writing down the limits, meaning what a manager may spend, who she can call in, and what she can offer a member to put something right. It is the same page you would leave behind for a week off.
How do you decide who owns each job?
Give every recurring job exactly one role's name, then write down what done looks like and what that role can decide alone. One role, not two, and never “everyone”: a job with two names has none.
Ask of each job who is closest to it when it happens. Cover is needed at a site, so it belongs to that site's manager. First-timers arrive at the desk, so greeting them belongs to the desk. A fading regular trusts the people she sees every week, so her save call goes to someone she knows. The schedule spans all three sites, so it belongs to the Director.
The owner's lane is the shortest, which is the point. The map names roles, not people: at a single site the owner may hold the Director's lane and a desk lead the manager's. The front desk checklist covers the desk's lane shift by shift, and one instructor job quietly breaks the numbers when it slips: checking people in.
What to do this week:
- Draw five lanes on one page, one per role.
- Put every recurring job in exactly one lane; a job that needs two is two jobs.
- Beside each, write what done looks like and what the role decides alone.
What are a studio manager's responsibilities?
A studio manager owns one site's day: its desk, its cover, its members' problems, its building and its numbers. Questions about the site reach her first, and the owner only above her limits. Here is Noor's lane at Downtown as a job description:
- The day runs: opening and closing to the checklists, and the desk rota out a week ahead.
- Every class is covered: from the site's cover list, in order.
- The desk is trained: shadow shifts first, then a one-page routine.
- Members' problems get fixed: complaints, freezes and exceptions, up to a written limit.
- Fading members hear from someone: she makes each save call or hands it to whoever knows the member.
- The building works: repairs and supplies, up to a spending limit.
- The numbers get read each Monday: fill by class, who is at risk, intros, and missed check-ins.
Above her sit the schedule, instructor hiring and prices (Theo) and money over her limits (the owner). What each role should see covers her numbers, and the second-location piece has a test for when a studio needs a Director at all.
How should you hand out a one-off job?
Pick one of four ways on purpose: one person, a copy each, the first in a role to take it, or open to the team. Each suits a different job, and the wrong one is how a clear request goes undone.
A copy each is for work every person must do themselves, like reading a new late-cancel policy; first to take it is for work that needs doing once. The two get swapped all the time, and each swap fails its own way.
The staff group chat is the worst of all four. “Can someone restock the towels?” names nobody, sets no day and leaves no record, so on Friday the towels are still yours. How to communicate with instructors gives each kind of message its own home. Whichever way you choose, put a day on it: “when you get a chance” is not a day.
What should a hand-off note say?
Why it matters, what done looks like, by when, what they can decide alone, and when to come back to you. Five lines, written once, save five questions arriving one at a time.
Owners skip the why because it feels obvious, and to them it is. Without it, every small call the job needs comes back as a question. The decide line matters as much: it is the difference between handing out a job and an errand.
When a job moves on, the note moves with it: if Noor is away, her cover list goes to the Old Town manager, not back to you.
What to do this week:
- Pick three things you would normally just do yourself, and hand each out with the five lines.
- Put a weekday on every one, and a number wherever money is involved.
How do you check on delegated work without taking it back?
Read one list at a fixed time, ask what is in the way, and never quietly redo the work. Checking is part of delegating; hovering is not, because after hovering the job is yours again.
- One list, one time. Everything you handed out, read at the same time each week; Monday suits it. Asking three people on three days tells each the job is still yours.
- Ask what is in the way. “Is it done?” gets a yes or an excuse. “What's in the way?” turns up what only you can clear.
- Different is not wrong. If it meets the standard you wrote, let it stand. If not, say which line it missed.
- Nothing sits for long. A job nobody touches for two days moves up a level: manager, Director, then you.
- Never take it back in silence. Redoing it at 10pm teaches the team it was never theirs.
What does the owner's week look like after?
Shorter, and made of different hours: 40 instead of 58, with 20 of them on the goals, the money and the leaders instead of 3. The rest went to the people whose jobs they were.
Nobody's week doubled: the three site managers took about six hours each, much of it time they used to spend asking, and Theo took twelve. Some of it costs wages, because the shifts the owner used to cover are now paid shifts. Count that honestly: it buys back the hours the growth plan gets written in. The final test is whether you could take a real week off with two weeks' notice. At Alturra, the answer went from no to yes.
Where this lives
A job map needs no software. The one-off jobs need a home that isn't your phone, and in Xyzios that is Tasks, on at every studio for every role. Anyone can give anyone a task: one person, several people with a copy each (“2 of 4 done”), everyone at a location, or a role there, where the first to tap Take it has it; or leave it open to the team. Tasks carry due dates, photos or PDFs, @mentions and Follow, and pass on with a note. A task you give is canceled, never deleted, so the record stays. Assigned by you is the one list to read on Monday.
Assign hands work out from an item in the Overview's Your focus, or from At Risk, where it gives a fading member's call to a teammate. Ticked done within two weeks, the call marks her Handled, and a save note that was waiting for her in Approvals then counts on the Recovered Revenue Ledger, the way a sent note does. Jobs that Xyzi, the assistant inside Xyzios, finds at a site, like a class that ran with people booked and nobody checked in, go to that site's location managers first, then the Directors, then the owners, after two untouched days and only between 7am and 9pm. Ask Xyzi drafts a task from a sentence; nothing is made until you tap Create.
Nothing in Tasks reaches a member: drafted member messages still wait for your approval, as the save play shows. Xyzios works with Mindbody and is an approved Mariana Tek integration, and does not do scheduling, sub requests, a time clock or payroll. The Tasks and Chat page has the full tour; running several sites shows it by location.
Start the seven-day log this week. The two-minute studio check shows which part of the studio depends on you most, and the revenue leak calculator sizes the save calls and payment fixes worth handing out first.