STEP ONE: IT IS ALL ABOUT YOU
How would you describe your relationship with your business?
"It rules my world. I am either at work, thinking about work or I take a break from work to fit in other things like my family.”
"My personal time is precious and rather than build a business that takes over my time I have had to stay small.”
"I spend too much time on tasks that take me away from building the business, the work I enjoy and the things I am good at.”
"Once I get to work it's not my time anymore. Everyone needs a piece of me and by the end of the day I am lucky if I have finished even one thing on my to-do list.”
If any of these sound like you and you are UNHAPPY about it, it’s time to fix it It starts with a very simple question.
Where are you in the business?
What a silly question. You are everywhere and everything from the salesperson to bookkeeper, cleaner to receptionist. But this is not YOU in the business; it's a one-man/one- woman band making up a workforce. Whether it's because you can’t afford more help or no one else can do it properly, you are basically hiring yourself as a worker (and probably earning not much more than you would as a worker).
If we take out your efforts, your labour, then where are you in the business? The answer is probably 'nowhere'. You are constantly on the telephone or email or fretting over something that no one else is doing properly but as soon as you are not busy being busy there is no more of you. This is why you find it difficult to describe your business except in terms of what you do in it. This is why you cannot take time off. Instead of ensuring the business reflects ‘you’, you have made yourself invisible in the business. You are like the sacrificial lamb who has given yourself up so the business can live.
Being your own 'elite' workforce creates two big barriers to your organisation's success. 1) You cannot scale. 2) You cannot lead.
Understanding scale
Scale means an organisation is able to expand using its existing resources. Building an organisation that is scalable means it operates effectively to greater capacity without increasing operating costs. A business that is not scalable is inefficient and compensates by stretching its resources to breaking point. It is unable to cope with greater demand so that increased business brings more revenue but results in decreased profits.
You are not scalable. There is only one of you and even if you never take a break you still only have 24 hours in a day. For your business to succeed you need to do more of what is scalable and do much less of what is not. When leaders make what they do their primary focus it does not take long for the organisation to reach its limits of growth and performance. A successful organisation creates a scalable management model. This is why leadership is so important - the culture it creates is scalable because it is effective influencing one, one hundred or one thousand people.
Leading the organisation
Why do business owners disappear within their own operations? Partially because they have been told "owners should not be