Does Your Business Run You? (Part 2)

In the previous posting we talked about how owners of small businesses can get out of the chicken and egg conundrum. The chicken and egg conundrum refers to business owners who are overworked, tired, don’t have enough sales or time to fulfill those sales, and the money isn’t coming in with enough regularity to hire someone. However, unless they hire someone (employee or outsourced free lancer), the money will never come in to get them out of the present situation. We talked about this requiring an expanded comfort zone including a higher tolerance for business risk. We also recommended a preference and competency chart (see previous post) with all your activities identified in one of 9 boxes. Anything that falls into boxes 5-9 is something to be given to someone else.

photo by Nosha

Every time you do a task that falls into boxes 5-9 (I’m ok at it but really don’t like it, I can’t do it well even though I like it somewhat, and any combination of those), think about delegating this activity. How can I best train someone to do this? What would a person need to know to do this well? How many steps would it take? How much would I like my work if I never had to do this activity again? How much time would this free up once someone was trained and I could do what I like instead? If that time were free, could it be used to get new customers or get referrals from present customers or improve the service customers get?

This will help motivate you to tolerate the risk. It will also get you out of the mindset of ‘Only I can do this.” and “You’re not moving fast enough so I’ll do it myself” These are lethal mindsets that doom a business to failure.

Nobody can read your mind. You have to train your new hires about your expectations. They may know how to do the job, probably better than you. But you have to be very specific what work you want done, what you expect them to accomplish in what time frame, what not to do, what the purpose of the work is, if you want them to be creative or adhere strictly to your guidelines, at what milestones do you want them to report on their progress. If they are working with your customers, what to say or not say, what to wear, how to present themselves. If they are working behind the scenes or virtually, an outline of their projects and deliverables, standards for work, examples of successful outcomes. Yes, it takes time to train someone. You have to get off the gerbil wheel (lots of exhausting activity going no where) to do it, but that’s how progress is made. It’s tough while the new hire or freelancer is ramping up and you’re still trying to make everything happen. But quickly it gets easier and easier.

Another recommendation is to write down how to do things, your systems. As you train someone or even before you start training, write down (or have them write down) procedures for updating the website, greeting customers, using the software, putting new customers in the mailing list, etc. You can build your operations manual over time. With an operations manual you can measure your new hire’s standard of performance against procedures that are written. When you make your next hire, your existing employee can do some of the training. People get cross trained and can fill in for each other. You start to rely on them because you know they are following procedures. They feel empowered because they have guidelines instead of a micromanager for a boss. You can take a day off. That’s the ultimate test, when you can leave and the business still goes on without you. That’s when you know you’re running your business instead of your business running you.

There are lots more suggestions on how you can run your business versus the other way around. Please contribute something you found works for you. We would all like to benefit from your knowledge and experience.

Jeri