All founders have a significant emotional investment in their business. The business is a child that they have nurtured and made successful. That’s a key reason why family businesses tend to do significantly better than others. But there’s a flip side. Being too attached sometimes means that the founder is involved in every aspect of the business. And nobody, in their view, can do as good a job as them. They are indispensable.
Are you indispensable to your business? In the early stages of a business, a founder is clearly indispensable. You find the niche you can fill, you work hard, you deliver to customer expectations. You make all critical decisions impacting your business. You grow. Once it’s mid-sized business, it gets more complicated. You have the same bandwidth but have more customers, more lines of business and more operational issues. So, you need many more employees to do the things you (and a small group of employees) used to do. That’s when the problems start.
Getting employees to fill your shoes for some activities isn’t easy though. Things which are obvious to you seem to be Greek to some of your employees. And teaching employees is painstaking. It’s faster doing something yourself, rather than delegating. And you get a much better job done! But that leads to an interesting, though frequently painful, conundrum. If you, the leader, is indispensable for critical activities, how do you scale up? That’s a key reason for the plethora of small to mid-sized family businesses. These businesses reach a stage where they just can’t grow any further.
Why can’t your employees deliver results?
In most family businesses, the head of the finance & accounts function is an exception to a common founder’s opinion that ‘People can’t / won’t Learn’. Why’s that? Accounts is the Achilles heel of most founders. Hence, the space and time that the head of the Accounts function gets is far greater than that afforded to other employees. For Operations, Business Development and Sales, employees typically get much less independence. What happens next? A vicious cycle. Those employees learn less. When they are given a ‘chance’ to do something independently, they can’t perform. Reinforcing the founder’s assumption that people are the problem.
Don’t fall into the trap of the curse of knowledge- ‘Once you know something, you cannot imagine what it was like to not know it’. Your experience allows for an automacity of behaviour. That automacity required time and importantly repetition of the behaviour in multiple situations to develop. You need to give the same time to your employees. Granted, that needs patience. But, it’s the only way your company is going to grow beyond a certain size.
We’ve all experienced the frustration of driving behind a learner. Things which seem obvious to us, seem quite difficult for them. They can’t seem to maintain a straight line and go at a crawl when the road is clear. But getting frustrated doesn’t help. Tooting your horn at the learner isn’t going to make him learn any faster. And volunteering to drive for him isn’t practical. So, we just need to be patient.
Caveats
This article advocates giving time to your employees to learn. That said, you need to continually provide guidance. Aim for the fine line between mentoring and micro-managing. That means you provide an environment where an employee doesn’t feel scared of approaching you for guidance. And knows that mistakes will be looked at in the context of the application of thought and diligence.
Closing thoughts
The initial feeling of losing control by making yourself dispensable can be disconcerting. Yet, being dispensable has a lot of advantages. The obvious one is the ability to grow your business at a rapid clip. The not so obvious one is that it lifts a load off your shoulders. Rather than being a lone warrior for many decisions, you have a team which works in consonance with you. And that gives you less tension and more time to enjoy your life!
Are you indispensable to your business? What’s caused that indispensability? Would love to hear your views and comments. Add below or write to/call me at sunildias@iv-advisors.com / 9322 737 127
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