#4: A “heads-up” for the founder

We have already talked about some of the signs that a business needs to change if it is going to grow, and it is almost inevitable that the change has to start close to home i.e. with the founder. He or she is normally so busy running the business that there is no time to consider taking on additional staff (even if the business can afford it), or if staff have been taking on, there is no time to offer them the strong leadership which they probably need.

There are therefore 2 issues be tackled; firstly, how do you feel about letting go, and trusting others with aspects of the work, and secondly, assuming you can come to terms with this, how do you go about doing so and continuing to feel ok about it?

You will not be the first person to have experienced this dilemna i.e how do you grow the business and give your fledgling team a sense of direction and common purpose? A good starting point would be logging how you spend your time in a “typical “ week. This could give some initial pointers as to how effective your time management is.

A second stage would be looking at the list of tasks and identifying:

• What absolutely has to be done by you
• What could without delay be passed to another member of staff
• What could be passed to another member of staff subject to the requisite training
• What could be outsourced to an external supplier or service provider
• What probably did not need to be done at all!

As part of this you can also factor in :

• What you enjoy doing
• What you are good at
• What you do not enjoy doing
• What you are not good at.

You can then start to make some informed decisions about how you free up your time. You can also use this as an opportunity, if you haven’t done so already, to create processes for different roles and tasks, so that work can be done consistently on a repeat basis to the standard you expect.

You can progressively ease yourself out of jobs as you create a related process and are satisfied that the person assuming that task is comfortable taking it on. Don’t forget that they may initially need your support in this activity – throwing them in at the deep end may not be the best strategy!