Struggle to delegate? Join the club. Here’s how to build a workflow that honors your strengths—and your time—without losing creative control.

When Kristen Rivoli launched her firm in 2009, she was thinking small. “Even as my business grew, I never saw myself as this big principal leading a firm,” says the Winchester, Massachusetts–based designer. “It was, ‘I’m a designer and I love to design.’” But as she acquired more and bigger projects, she soon found herself spread too thin. “It was obvious that someone has to make all these decisions, and I couldn’t do that while I was still pulling schemes for review,” she says. “When I couldn’t get everything done, I knew I had to start handing things off.”

Rivoli took a pragmatic approach as she handed off responsibilities, sticking around in the creative process just long enough to get a “yes” from her clients and then letting her team take over. “It’s something I think about every year, to see if there are more things I can delegate,” she explains. “It also helps my team grow when they’re given a sense of ownership of the work we do for our clients.”