TAKE A STEP BACK – Create a Self Managing Business

Are you that frustrated business owner, running continually in a vicious circle on the hamster wheel?

Are you running the business or is the business running you? 

As you begin to scale up, business owners often fall into the trap of being too involved with the day-to-day operational detail.  The biggest failing you may suffer is the perception you’ll lose control if you’re not involved on the front line.  Most business owners don’t design the ideal business model allowing them to escape from this detail.

Don’t be fooled. Businesses are complex entities, and you are the driver and the leader.  Your team don’t need another colleague, they need a leader. If you continue to be just another colleague, you are depleting your business of it’s one valuable resource – Leadership.

You need to be in the driving seat, evolving the business tools and systems providing the right management information to stay in your comfort zone. This should tell you whether your operations are achieving results, without feeling you’re losing control.

You need to create a self-managing business, design and implement your business DNA, keeping your finger on the pulse of the day-to-day momentum.

Here are three key actions to position your business into a turnkey organisation – freeing up your sacred time to focus on the strategic growth away from the day-to-day tasks.

Delegate

Most owner-managers work long hours.  Research shows they spend too much time meddling in the detail and solving other people’s problems for them. The most important task you should dedicate time for is the future strategy of the business. Yet, the typical owner-manager spends less than 10% of their time on this.  They’re spending too much time in the detail.

The thought of delegating to your staff can be scary. The fear of losing control of the detail shackles you into the operational minutiae that you should leave to your employees.

Delegation is achieved by coaching, transferring your knowledge and experience, whilst allowing your staff the autonomy to bring their own skills and capabilities to the job. You never know, they may be better at it than you, and you shouldn’t feel threatened by that.  Embrace it! Richard Branson couldn’t fly a plane but look where the Virgin empire is now.

Developing effective management systems, monitoring and reporting mechanisms will ensure that you:

• keep your finger on the pulse without having to micromanage
• receive status updates on a daily or weekly basis before things get too far out of control
• be proactive in guiding off-schedule conditions back on track before it has a negative long-term impact.

Delegating frees up time to work on the long-term sustainability and future of your business, trusting your team to get on with the job.

Systems for Smarter Working

When moving through the start-up to the first growth phase, a lot of change can take place in a very short space of time.  This can be daunting for you as the owner, let alone the staff being carried along with you. You need to be flexible and fluid, but you must put systems and processes in place to stay in control of your business.

Providing structure to their working practices helps your employees feel stable in what can be an overwhelming state of constant change.  Delegation is made so much easier if you have mapped the workflows, written the manuals and procedures and set out your expectations clearly.

It’s essential to create systems or frameworks within which people should work.  This can range from a simple daily task list to more sophisticated planning and reporting mechanisms.  Its also imperative to set expectations by defining the indicators their progress and performance will be measured and managed against. Without these, your employees have little or no understanding of what is expected of them, and delegation will create more problems than it resolves.

Share the Knowledge

As businesses grow it’s imperative that the processes or work methods producing the best results are shared across your team.   Whether, for example, that’s the fastest, most efficient, produce the best quality, or most effective use of materials.  I’ve regularly come across businesses where staff are rarely consulted how they got such good results (or poor results) and shared their experiences.

If you don’t encourage this cross-fertilisation, how can you perpetuate the best practice and eliminate the inefficiencies?  The opportunity to have everyone maintaining the highest standards, rather than small pockets of staff achieving optimum level, could be masking your profit potential due to lack of knowledge sharing.

Possibly more of a risk, it’s not unheard of for employees to make information their own.  This becomes a power base, making them ‘indispensable’.  This is risky as the business owner becomes unwittingly dependent on that individual.  Operationally it can create real bottlenecks if no one else in the business can perform that function should that individual call in sick or go on holiday.

More worryingly, when that individual leaves the business, the knowledge and experience they’ve gained leaves with them, and you’re back to the drawing board.  This is the key reason I advocate ‘de-personalising’ the running of the business through systems and processes.  It maintains the ‘company way’ rather than being reliant on a single individual.

Document our Company “Best Way”

By building a library of best practice, creating a training manual, or a point of reference in the event staff are absent, reduces the risk to your business.  You will benefit from a more flexible and engaged team, as they witness their performance improving.  This breaks down the sense of ‘hierarchy’ between employees, which often demotivates the less skilled members of the team.

When everybody understands the best methods to optimise productivity; deliver the best quality product or highest level of customer service as the norm rather than the exception, your bottom-line results will improve.

If you’re continually looking for ways to improve, the best practices and working methods may change.  Simply update the manual accordingly and communicate the changes through a Toolbox Talk or monthly training update session.  The Company ‘Best Way’ should evolve and improve over time, in a culture of continuous improvement.

Fringe Benefits

There are fringe benefits to documenting your processes, systems and procedures. B-Corp, ISO Accreditation or other Quality Certifications require written statements of your business procedures in a transparent and auditable format. Get it right, and you’ll be halfway to achieving that accreditation.

You’ll stand out from the crowd and gain competitive advantage in your quotations, bids or tenders presenting your documented standards. These will clearly communicate the quality of service your clients can consistently expect from you.

And last, but not least, if you decide to sell your company these manuals will add significant value, making your business more attractive to prospective buyers.

Design Your Turnkey Business

To achieve your turnkey business, Alluxi offers the Business DNA Open Course. This is designed specifically for business owners wanting to scale up their organisation, achieve their life goals and financial aspirations.

This is an intensive programme of six workshops delivered over 13 weeks.  Designed for start-up and early years SME business owners needing to get systems, processes and procedures in place.

The course delivers the fundamentals required to be less hands-on with day-to-day operations.  You’ll learn how to free up your time to be strategic and forward-thinking. You will be guided to develop your own unique business ‘genetic code’ model to scale-up your organisation.

This forms your business DNA, allowing you to consistently deliver on time, on budget, with the right resource levels. In turn, you will create happy customers, achieve a decent work-life balance and the financial results you aspire to.

For more information and to register your interest in the next course please contact linda@alluxi.co.uk

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