WORK ON YOUR BUSINESS MORE THAN YOU WORK IN YOUR BUSINESS

Starting a business is so many things at once — exciting, frustrating, rewarding, tiring, time-consuming. Most business owners start businesses by themselves with little or no help from others. They have to be and do everything: sales, marketing, accounting, information technology, production, inventory control, purchasing, janitorial. When starting, business owners must work IN their businesses. The monetary resources generally are not available to hire staff and have separate responsibilities and departments. As time passes and the business grows, however, business owners must shift their focus and work ON their businesses more than working IN their businesses.

As time passes and the business grows, business owners must shift their focus and work ON their businesses more than working IN their businesses.

When I started my business, Scrapper’s Edge, I didn’t have any employees. I worked at the business six days a week while still working for my family’s business on nights and Sundays. Looking back, I’m not sure how I found the energy. However, I knew I had a dream and nothing was going to get in the way of my determination. I realized that working long crazy hours was what it would take as I grew my business. And, having the security of still working at my family’s business made good fiscal sense. After one year, I hired my first part-time employee who only worked two days a week. Now, fourteen years later, I have seven employees and am spending more time working ON my business rather than IN my business.

Most entrepreneurs love the excitement of planning and starting a business. They love thinking about the big picture, the future, how everything will work. As time goes on, however, entrepreneurs can get bogged down working IN their businesses rather than ON their businesses and they can lose the interest, energy, and excitement they had when they first started their businesses.

The best way to avoid losing interest is to learn to step back from the day-to-day operations and focus more on the big picture.

As a business owner, if you are working on tasks that an employee could be doing, you’re not being an effective leader. So, you must always ask yourself, “Is what I’m doing the best use of my time?” If the answer is “no” then you need to delegate more.

Have you ever been reluctant to delegate? Why? I bet I can guess. You’ve probably said these things to yourself:

“It’s easier and faster to do it myself.”
“It won’t be done as well as I can do it.”
“I don’t have time to teach someone else how to do it.”

You will get burned out and your business will not grow if you don’t learn to delegate!

Rather than getting tied down working IN your business, your business will prosper more if you work ON your business.

Get over your excuses and think about how you, as the business owner, can really benefit your business the most. Rather than getting tied down working IN your business, your business will prosper more if you work ON your business. Think of all the “big picture” things you should be doing that you probably are not doing enough of:

Spotting problems
Finding solutions
Setting goals
Establishing procedures
Motivating people

If you are so busy working on tasks that your staff could be handling, you will not see the big picture. As a result, your employees will not grow and will not feel challenged. Your business could suffer in so many ways including dissatisfied customers, inefficiencies and lack of sales growth.

Not only should you ask yourself if what you’re doing is the best use of your time, but you should also ask yourself what you’d like to be doing or should be doing that you’re not getting done. Make a list of the things you wish you had time for. It may look something like this:

Write operations manual
Attend weekly business networking events
Revise marketing plan
Research new vendor options
Develop an employee reward system

Once you have a list of the things you wish you had time for, it will help motivate you to delegate more. But, remember, delegating is much more than showing something a new task then walking away.

Once you have a list of the things you wish you had time for, it will help motivate you to delegate more.

To successfully delegate, consider following these guidelines:

Select what to delegate.

To do this evaluate the things you’re doing and determine which tasks can be handled by employees.
Pick who to delegate to.

When delegating, pick the person you’ll delegate to based on the task. Maybe one of your employees has a skill set that would be perfect for that task. Or possibly an employee has expressed an interest in learning more about a particular part of your business. Often, the person you may trust the most to delegate to may already have too much responsibility and not enough time to add more tasks. It that’s the case, you may first have to work with that person to see what tasks can be transferred from that person to another employee prior to you delegating.
Prepare.

Write clear instructions. If you have weekly checklists for employees, you may also need to add the delegated tasks to the checklists to ensure they get completed.
Teach, watch and coach.

Delegating a task should be more than simply explaining what should be done and handing over instructions. Show the employee how to do the task. Watch them do it to ensure they understand. Follow-up and coach periodically. Remember, you don’t want your delegated tasks to end up back on your to-do list so the more time you spend ensuring that a person understands and can complete what has been delegated, the better the chances are of success.
Follow-up.

Ensure that the delegated tasks are being completed and that performance standards are being met my checking in with the employee and/or reviewing the work quality periodically.

Delegating is a crucial component of moving from a place of working IN your business to working ON your business.

Delegating is a crucial component of moving from a place of working IN your business to working ON your business. Delegating is also important to ensure you don’t burn out and continue to feel excited about your business. As time goes on and your business grows, you’ll want to continually evaluate what responsibilities can be shifted from yourself as well as your staff members. Even as I was thinking about writing this article, I thought of things that I currently do IN my business that I should be delegating. Some of those things I simply enjoy doing and are hard to give up. However, in order to ensure that my business continues to grow, I must work ON my business even more.

Remember to ask yourself these two things:

What should I be doing that I don’t have time for?
What am I doing that someone else could be doing?

Then start delegating! You, your employees and your customers will all benefit!

Bio
Latest Posts

Sondra Kirtley

Sondra Kirtley, MBA, is an entrepreneur who owns and operates a retail and service business in Eureka, California. Known for her helpful nature and small business expertise, Sondra founded SmallBizpathway.com to share tips and experiences with other small business owners.