What is your most important role?

Business owners wear many hats.  We’re often the visionary, financial wizard, chief marketer, HR manager, IT person and producer of goods and services.  Early in the life of the business, we often have little choice about handling all of these functions.  But at some point in the life of the business, it makes sense to determine our most important role and focus our efforts and attention.

Figuring out how to do that can be a challenge.  Here are a few ways to approach it.

1.  What do you enjoy?  We tend to enjoy things we’re good at, and we tend to be good at things we enjoy.  (Go figure!)  If you enjoy marketing and hate finance, you’re going to choose to do more marketing than budgeting.  That doesn’t make budgeting any less important–it just gets less attention.  Know what you enjoy and think about whether or not it makes sense for you to focus your attention there.

2.  What can someone else do just as well or better than you?  Business owners can be a little controlling.  Sometimes its hard for us to believe that anyone can do things as well or better than we can, but they can, and we should take advantage of that.  Maybe the actual consulting you do is difficult to teach someone else to do, or you have particular expertise and experience that you can’t duplicate easily.  Fine, then think about those things that you can teach:  billing and financial record keeping, standard marketing activities, clerical tasks, and so on.  If someone else can learn how to do it, let them.  That will free you up for the things no one else can do as well as you.

3.  Where do you add the most value?  We each get 24 hours a day — that’s it.  If you want to maximize the value of your business, you have to spend your time on those areas where you add the most value.  If that’s selling, focus there.  If its delivering services, focus there.  Time is a perishable resource.  Every minute you spend doing something that doesn’t add significant value is a minute lost.

If you’re a small company or a one-person company, you may be thinking, “sure, I’d like to hand off some things, but who can I hand them off to?”  There are lots of options today.  Many small companies have sprung up to handle the tasks you shouldn’t.  Companies like Mattson Business Services can handle many of your administrative tasks and keep you organized.  Companies like Web Business Freedom can help manage your social media challenges.  Daniel Ratliff & Company can help with your accounting challenges.  And Altman Initiative Group can help with many of your HR challenges.

Take a little time to think about your most important role.  Your business’s future may depend on it.

Tick, tick, tick…that’s your day slipping away!

Time is perhaps the most predictable thing in our lives.  It comes and goes at the same rate every single day.  Time is also probably the most fair thing in our lives.  Each living person on the planet gets the same amount of time each day – 24 hours, no more, no less.

Why, then, is time management such an issue for most people.  Alas, it isn’t the time that needs managing, it’s the people.  If we can’t control the supply of time or the rate at which it burns, we must control our choices about how we use time. 

The biggest complaint regarding time management concerns interruptions.  You plan your day, and then the interruptions start.  Your family needs you, your staff needs you, your customers need you.  We fret over the interruptions, but we may actually be encouraging them.  It is nice to be needed, after all.  If no one needed us, they wouldn’t have to interrupt us, would they? 

Here are some behaviors that will minimize interruptions.  How many of them do you exhibit?

1. Give clear instructions when assigning work.  Think about it from the recipient’s point of view.  Don’t assume they know things that you know.  You can gauge your effectiveness by how often they have to interrupt you for more information.
2. Empower others to handle tasks.  Set clear guidelines about when you need to get involved.  In some cases, this may be a dollar amount.  In others, you may empower based on time.  Train employees, family members, and even customers about what they can handle without you. 
3. Teach others to solve problems.  When someone comes to you with a problem, don’t solve it for him.  Lead him through a thought process to determine possible courses of action.  Teach him ways to judge those options and predict consequences of each one.  He will become more confident, and you’ll be interrupted less often.
4. Close your door.  “Hide” for an hour a day.  Gather anything you’ll need to complete the tasks at hand.  Then inform everyone that you’re going in and you will be out in one hour.  Statistics show that you will accomplish three hours of work in that one hour.  Do not allow interruptions.  Reinforce your policy and your team will get used to it.  You’ll be glad you did.

Will you lose employees when the economy recovers?

About two years ago, the topic of a pending labor shortage was making the news.  There were articles everywhere about the retiring of the baby boomers and the inadequate number of people ready to fill the void.

And then, the recession hit with full force.  Suddenly, the pending labor shortage wasn’t all that important anymore.  In fact, unemployment numbers began to rise.  Not only were there ENOUGH people to fill the jobs, there were TOO MANY people for the jobs available.

Thus goes the cyclical nature of most economic phenomena.  But, as they say, “what goes up must come down,” and with that comes yet another challenge.  Once the economy rebounds, will you be able to keep the employees you have?

This is particularly important because many companies who needed to trim staff started with the least productive workers, as one would expect.  That means that the employees who remained were the most productive.  They were likely also the best trained, had the best attitudes, and had the highest potential to impact the company in a positive way.  These are the people you most want to keep as the economy rebounds.

Shifting attitudes

Many employees, even the ones who kept their jobs during the downturn, have become jaded.  They witnessed their friends and family dealing with layoffs, company closings and hard times.  They often feared for their own jobs, not knowing which companies would be able to survive the continuing economic decline.  That sort of stress has long-term impacts.

Add to that the inability of companies to give raises and bonuses or to pay for training and development, and you see a further deterioration in morale.  Loyalty of employees to a company was already waning before this downturn, and now, it is likely to deteriorate further.

What do employees want?

This is the 10 million dollar question, and it has been for years.  The general wisdom has pointed to “meaningful work,” “being in on things,” “feeling appreciated,” and “opportunities to grow and develop.”  All of these are likely true at one point in time or another, and from one person to another.  Economic factors, while often deemed not a motivator, also come into play. 

Maslow’s Hierarchy may have a place here.  When employees are worried about paying the mortgage and putting their kids through school, self-esteem and self-actualization may take a back seat.  The immediate need for economic resources takes precedence. 

As recovering companies compete for employees, they all want the best and brightest.  Competition for those folks means that the stakes rise.  Salaries, signing bonuses, relocation packages, incentive compensation—all of these will be tools companies use to entice the best to leave the fold and come over to the other side.

Even when the economy is good, many employees have learned through observation and experience that moving up often means moving over—to another company.  If they want to advance in position or compensation, they often find it easier to negotiate with a new company than with their existing one.

How do you view your employees?

There’s an old joke about a man who has an opportunity to choose between Heaven and Hell.  When he takes a tour of each, Hell looks much more inviting than Heaven – all the good things of life are at your fingertips!  So, the guy chooses Hell.  Once he makes his choice and arrives, he finds the lake of fire and torment.  He questions the Devil about this, and the Devil replies “then you were a prospect, now you’re an employee.”

Too often, employees feel that this is the way they are being treated.  Their value seems to diminish once they come on board.  They aren’t “special” anymore.  That’s why they are more easily lured to other companies – the people who are courting them make them feel special.

The flip side, of course, is that we know more about our employees than we did about them as candidates.  We’ve learned about their rough spots and foibles.  We know them as the flawed human beings that we all are – not just the story they sold us during their interview.  Potential employees, of course, have similar rough spots and foibles—we just don’t know what theirs are yet.

We also get into a mode of justifying why we can’t give an employee a raise or bonus during tough times.  We feel badly about that, and it makes us feel better if we can point to something that at least partly justifies the decision.  “Well, remember last month when he missed that deadline…”  We end up focusing on what employees don’t do instead of what they can do. 

We feel a bit of a disconnect when we’re saying to our employees, “You’re so great,” and giving them 0 – 2% raises.  We’re afraid, at times, that they are going to push back.  “If I’m so great, why can’t you find a way to help me out?”  Avoiding this disconnect may result in employees feeling unvalued.  And that will hurt us when the economy recovers.

So, what’s the answer?

Employees, similarly, become disenchanted with the current employer and see the prospective employer as more worthy of their time and effort.  They know our rough spots and foibles, but not those that exist at the prospective employer’s house.

It seems no surprise, then, that communication is the key.  If the grass is always greener, perhaps we need to talk about our own lawns.  What do your employees want the company to be?  What does the company need employees to focus on?  How can the two work hand in hand to better serve customers and make the company stronger?  Employees and employers aren’t adversaries, they’re partners.  Or at least they should be.

Some of the companies who have forged this kind of relationship with employees cite openness and honesty as foundations.  If employees know what you’re trying to accomplish and how you’re going about it, they can better understand how they fit into the picture.  Employees need to understand how they personally impact the company’s success AND see that employees benefit as the company succeeds.  When this direct connection is clear, employees feel empowered.

I held a training session at a large, well-known company a couple of years ago.  During the session I asked the group how their jobs impacted the bottom line of the company.  I received blank stares.  Only after spending some time on how their function impacted other departments were they able to draw a clear line between their function and company success.

How does your company ensure that employees understand their contribution to the company’s success?  Do you talk about it?  Do you let employees know when their work or ideas prompted a good result?  Do you explain how their actions took a toll on company profits and long-term success?

From on-boarding all the way through their career, employees should know clearly how they impact the company, and they should be treated as an integral part of the company’s success or failure.