You’re a brilliant technician – you’re great “on the tools”, and that’s why your business has reached this level of success.
As your business has grown, I’m sure, like many small business owners, you’ve found yourself wearing many different hats, most of which probably don’t fit that well; marketing, business development, HR, finance, and sometimes even reception!
Sure, everyone respects a leader that gets their hands dirty, but if you’re unable to stop to see the wood for the trees, are you effectively leading at all?
Your growing business and team need a strategist and a leader.
Someone who sets the vision, creates the plan to achieve it and communicates and manages the plan. Someone who has the brain space to see problems and doesn't simply put a bandaid on them but finds and fixes the root cause. Someone who drives a great culture and manages poor performance.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen (effectively) when you’re bogged down on the tools or working “in” your business, especially if you’re responsible for a large portion of billable work.
Here are four areas that may hinder you from being the leader you need to be and having a thriving business.
Fear of cash flow keeps you on the tools
According to BLS (US Bureau of Labor Statistics) data, 45% of businesses fail during the first five years, and 65% during the first ten years!
The reasons that were given? Bad business planning and expanding too fast.
As businesses grow, what was once 'little things' become magnified. Poor business planning means the business and the people within it are often reactive and consistently putting out fires instead of taking time to work out what’s causing them in the first place.
The problem with no planning, growth without structure and justifying not hiring to fill key person dependencies (that’s you and your contribution to direct revenue) means that any “success” is a false economy. In a growing business, if no one is steering the ship, it’s easy for the business to run aground.
Our recommendations?
- Take time (away from working “in” the business) to plan effectively. This should include a resource plan to reduce your personal billable time, or potentially bring in new management levels, so your time is more effectively used where you play best.
- Use your team to uncover the biggest impact problems and workshop how to address them.
- Create systems and processes to manage plans, reduce waste and hold the team accountable.
Every decision still goes through you
You created a flat leadership structure because you never liked bureaucracy, and the business has been too small for more levels of management anyway.
Having a very flat structure is good in theory, but there is a point in every growing business when you realise that you’ve become a bottleneck.
When team members spend more time reminding you of the things they need from you than having meaningful conversations about business improvement or delighting your customers, something needs to change.
Change comes in various ways but often involves letting go of some control and allowing others to make decisions without you. This is often a challenging time for business owners.
This change can be made much easier by:
- Communicating the outcome and delegating effectively.
- Having appropriate controls in place, especially around delegated authorities.
- Proactively managing the team to keep people on track.
- Have systems around management and execution to keep you informed on the outcomes of important actions that have been delegated.
Stepping back and appropriately handing over responsibility can be a game changer for your business.
You’re hiring, but you’re not nurturing the new recruits
In a growing business, your people and their success equate to your success.
The problem is, in the “busy-ness” of being stuck on the tools, are you hiring people who don't get up to speed quickly enough or keep making the same mistakes no matter how many times you tell them to do it differently?
Hiring people won’t support your goals if you don’t develop a process to nurture them effectively. Or worst still, if you’re in the habit of jumping in because “it’s quicker if I just do it myself”.
How do you do it differently?
- Ensure you have a culture that fosters learning, knowledge and IP exchange – remember your business grew because you were good at being a technician – so teach your team what you know!
- Have an onboarding process to ensure your new recruits hit the ground running as quickly as possible.
- Set 30, 60 and 90-day development milestones for each recruit. This will help them to understand their growth journey and hold you accountable for allocating time to support their development.
You want to be an appreciated boss
Every human is driven, on some level, by wanting to be appreciated by those around us.
Many business owners feel isolated and alone because the team they work with complain about the little things but have no idea of all the plates you’re spinning or the sleepless nights when you’re struggling to make payroll. Where’s your acknowledgement for a job well done?
How do you get appreciation without taking the limelight? Appreciation comes from building trust and being a respected leader of the team.
Great leadership looks like this:
- Having faith in your vision and staying true to your values.
- Having integrity above all else – if you say you’re going to do it, do it.
- Be comfortable with making hard choices and sometimes being unpopular.
- Get better at communicating, and in particular, communicating differently depending on your team’s styles.
- Have the humility to learn and grow in the areas you might be uncomfortable in – and that might be your leadership!
Most business owners, particularly those who have come from being great technicians, say that running a business is the hardest thing they have ever done.
It can get easier, but it does involve getting off the tools and spending more time working “on” the business. It’s also going to involve getting comfortable with changing what you’ve been doing till now.
Honestly though, you’ve come this far, and I’m sure the ride has had its share of uncomfortable moments. You can do more!
Good luck and great fortune in your journey to getting off the tools, firing up your team and being a respected boss.
