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Rebalancing Your Team

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As Verne Harnish says in Mastering the Rockerfeller Habits, we need to get the right people, doing the right things, right.  Have you ever felt you have enough people on your team, but you are still overwhelmed by your own workload?  I have felt that way.  It wasn’t that I didn’t have enough help. It was that I didn’t have the “right” help.  I had to admit that I had failed to hire the right people.  It was now time to do the right thing for both the team member and I.  I needed to rebalance my team.

Mike Michalowicz writes in his book Clock Works, that we should take notice of our teams’ super strengths.  Are they in their “genius” zone?  We then need to take a microscopic look at our business needs.  Is our team’s “genius” zone and our business needs aligned?  Are we leaving talent on the table? 

Something that I’m still graveling with is that today’s work force doesn’t want to be pigeon hold into a traditional job description.  I like things neat and tidy – that’s why I make such a great bookkeeper.  I like when things are logical and ties out.  However, in this new climate, our team members want us to recognize that they can do task A in their job description AND task B in another job description.  It’s okay for them to mix and mingle tasks together to stay interested and connected with the company’s purpose and mission.

I encourage you to get to know your team’s strengths.  It is possible that you have something on your desk you need to “transfer” and a team member has that skill or desire to do that task.

Sometimes we find that we hired someone that just doesn’t “fit” in our company.  It is hard to do this kind of rebalancing, but I encourage you to be bold and courageous – Set them FREE.  You will not believe how much time and energy you have been wasting on the wrong fit.  Believe it or not, at some point they will come to appreciate that you had the courage to set them free.  They are released to find something that truly fulfills them.  Be sure to get legal counsel for this step – if you haven’t heard about legal shield, ask me – I’m happy to share my experience with them.

The Three T’s: Trim, Transfer and Trash

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The first thing I did was look at all the time I spent “deciding” for my team.  As a team we talked about how we can reduce the number of hours in the back and forth of making decisions.  I made a huge leap forward and did four things.  I gave them permission to make decisions.  I trust my team – I have hired some very smart people that just needed to know they had permission to do what it takes to get the job done.

In the process of discussing with my team, I asked how I can support them in making those decision by themselves. They all said they need more information.  When I was in the Clock Work Workshop back in January, Adrienne Dorison gave me some great ideas on how to provide that information.  My favorite was giving my team a guide line to follow or what she called “Guard Rails”.  For instants if you have a team member working on accounts receivable, you can give anyone a payment arrangement if they stay inside 45 days.  They no longer need to come to you if the client needs a 15-day extension and has always been a good paying client.

The next thing I did was work on instilling confidence in each member of my team.  When they made a decision using the guard rail or other methods we created, I have begun to praise them.  I must admit my Accounting Manager, Kathy, is so much better at this than I am – BUT – I make big efforts here to notice and praise a job well done.  It truly does help them make the next step in decision making without you.

Trim

Now that I have given permission, information and working on confidence boosting, I was able to do the first T – which is trim.  I trimmed away the time, energy and resources used to make decisions.  I had my whole team work on “trimming”.  I asked them to look at their process.  Is there something we can take away or minimize?

Transfer 

This is where I got the most time back for business development.  I promoted Kathy to do the supervising of the bookkeeping team.  She now does all the 1 2 1 meetings and communicating with them.  She coordinates schedules, trainings and work load.  You guested it – that put a huge hole in my day and gave me time to do things like write my own newsletters rather than buy “can” ones.

Trash 

I began with the most important question, is there a task that you can just stop doing?  After i asked myself this question, I found a very BIG time waster.  We use Asana for our project management system.  It tags the person doing the work and the team members following it.  I found that I was deleting emails from Asana for an hour a day.  Yikes… Why would I need Asana to tell me I completed a task that I just clicked off?  It may need to inform the next person in line that will work on the project, but not the person that just completed the task.  I took a few hours and removed ALL the tags that were unnecessary.  I knew that if I was spending an hour a day, then my team was also spending an hour a day.  That means I just got back 5 hours a day or 25 hours a week? No wait, that’s 100 hours a month back for actual work!  What can you eliminate? 

 

The Four D’s: Doing, Deciding, Delegating, and Designing

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According to Mike Michalowicz, the author of Clock Works, there are four types of work that we do each day.  The secret to a successful day is getting these four areas to an optimum level.

The Four Ds are:  Doing, Deciding, Delegating and Designing

The optimum mix of these areas are 80% doing, 2% deciding, 8% delegating and 10 % designing. It stands to reason that 80% of our time should be “doing” – delivering our product or services to our clients.  After all, without our clients, we really don’t have a business.

Decisions

If our businesses are set up with systems and procedures AND have given our team permission, information and the confidence to make decisions themselves, then really should not be doing much deciding for our business. This is where a lot of business owners get hung up.  We either think we are the only ones that can make important decisions for our business OR we don’t give our team enough information to make the decisions for themselves.  Is there a physical or virtual line by your office door? I’ve experience this at my office door and it makes it hard for me to actually do my “doing”.

The Art of Delegating

Don’t make the mistake I did and called it delegating. Instead think of it as being decision making in disguise.  Delegating is training your team member to do AND then letting them run with it.  Give them guard rails to make decisions on their own.  For example, if you have given someone the task of following up on your accounts receivable, give them a guard rail – call on our clients to collect, make payment arrangements if you think it’s a good idea, just keep things to 30 or 60 days.  Then only have them report back to you if something is going to fall outside the guard rail.  Trust that they have it.

Designing

Designing is another common topic in business development that you and I should be doing as the business owner.  I don’t know about you, but I opened my business because I liked the “doing” part of my business.  I love working on a QuickBooks file … getting it from a chaotic state to a well-organized file that brings clarity to my client.  However, as I have grown the business, I have become much more of a manager than a bookkeeper.  Now that I’ve promoted someone to manager, I find myself unsure of what I should do with my day.  OH… yes, I should be doing development work.  The problem with that is I’m much more comfortable reconciling a bank account than developing the business.  Are you hiding in your “doing” rather than designing?

We took the time analysis a step further and had our bookkeeping department do the analysis. We have some work to do to get us to the ideal range.  What about you?  What is your range?

QBR: Queen Bee Role

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Let’s start off with the QBR.  What’s a QBR you ask – it’s the Queen Bee Role.  What’s that mean?  It’s the one thing your business must do, or it won’t be capable of completing its mission.  It’s the one thing that EVERYONE in the company needs to protect.

I’ve been asking myself, what is our Queen Bee Role for Sooter Consulting, Inc.? This question has developed a couple different forms over the years, and I found myself at a loss in answering it – until now.  It took me talking this out with my accounting manager before I saw that it was right in front of my face all along.  It’s in my email signature line.  It’s on my website and it’s even in my newsletter template.  – Our brand promise is – Bringing clarity to your finances! 

That leads me to our QBR – Providing accurate and on-time financials in a way that brings clarity to our clients. 

I can now use this QBR to define who is serving the QBR directly and how we can design their jobs to most efficiently produce our end-product of clarity.

We are looking at the bookkeeper’s jobs and making sure everything they do is related to bring clarity to our clients.  We are looking at all the tasks they preform and seeing if there is something that needs to be transferred to another person. 

There are changes coming to Sooter Consulting and it will all benefit our clients.

Want to learn more about this QBR or Clock Working your business.  Contact Donna and I’m sure she will make time to tell you how to clock work your business.

A taste of the next newsletter – You guessed it …more on Clock Working… We will go through the 4 D’s.

Growing Pains: Structural Considerations for Growing your Business

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Ask any small-business owner what he sees as the major challenges to growing his business, and chances are he’ll say: winning more sales. Ask any medium- or large-business owner what her major challenges have been, however, and she’ll probably say: structural growing pains — putting into place the necessary processes and structure to accommodate a higher volume of business. In fact, one of the most common reasons businesses plateau at a certain level is their inability — or unwillingness — to develop the structure needed for growth. 

But aligning structural changes with sales growth is not simple. It is often more of an art than a science. The systems, processes, staff, and organization changes needed to grow are ongoing and dictated by myriad factors such as the nature of the business, its capital requirements and, ultimately, customer demands. Nonetheless, certain structural growth concerns — excluding financing and office/production space issues — are shared among all growing companies and fall into three overall areas: organizational structure, policies and procedures, and systems/technology.

Staffing/Organizational Structure  

Among the most common growing pains small companies experience are those related to organizational structure. Organizational structure and reporting hierarchy for a 25-person company is quite different than it is for a five-person organization. Typically, an entrepreneur can manage fine until there are about a dozen people in the organization. At this point, the initial structure — where everyone usually reports to the owner — breaks down. In effect, nothing can be done without involving the owner, creating a communications log jam and a barrier to growth. A telltale sign of such a situation is the line of staff outside the boss’s office — waiting patiently for a decision before work can recommence. The best way to overcome or prevent this from happening is simple: Trust your key employees and learn to delegate. A good place to start is to look at where you are spending your time.

You can still have final say on any important decisions, but you need not be involved with the time-consuming, day-to-day issues that can prevent you from focusing on larger, more strategic matters. It’s also important to formalize delegated authority with an organizational chart and job descriptions. These will help you better define functional expertise for a given job and for various departments across the organization and provide the foundation for the growth of future personnel and key management staff.

Lack of functional expertise is another common growing pain of small companies. Too often, businesses fail to recognize that specific expertise is needed as they grow. Typically, small businesses are organized around the manager’s area of expertise, such as marketing, accounting, or production. This specialized expertise often prevents the business owner from recognizing problems that may arise in other parts of the business. It’s a good idea to periodically get an outsider’s opinion of where expertise may be lacking. These need not be paid consultants but are often trusted business acquaintances. Tapping into this same group, you can also form an advisory board to give you periodic feedback on strategic direction.

Policies and Procedures 

For most smaller businesses, written policies and procedures are often nonexistent and sometimes cursed. Typically, they are associated with the bureaucracy and inefficiency of big companies and the enemy of customer responsiveness and quick time to market. Not surprisingly, most smaller businesses have few documented operational policies or procedural guidelines. But it is precisely this lack of documentation — and the thought that goes into it — that can put a stranglehold on rapid growth. If your business is growing fast enough to require frequent additions to staff, formalized policies are a must for training purposes. Even if you are expanding at a moderate pace, documented policies will likely be necessary once you reach 20 or more employees.

What warrants a formal policy and what should be documented? This will depend on the nature of your business and average skill level of your employees. In general, however, it’s a good idea to document all HR policies in detail, expense approval authorization levels, inventory control policies, billing and collection procedures, and any operational policies that could materially affect your business if they went amiss. An annual budget and sales projection, updated monthly, are also a necessity if you are ever to obtain outside funding or sell your company. Later on, consider putting together a comprehensive policy manual where employees can get answers to questions when decision makers are unavailable.

As you grow bigger, you will also need to put into place more formalized communications channels for employees and customers. An informed and involved staff is usually a more productive and enthusiastic one; whereas a staff that is left in the dark often feels alienated and unappreciated. Regularly scheduled employee meetings, periodic e-mail updates, and a cascade communications policy are several ways to make sure your internal communications channels facilitate, not constrict, growth.

Is your business suffering from growing pains?

Here are some sure signs that structural changes may be in order.

  • Sales continue to grow but profits do not.
  • Everyone is working increasingly long hours.
  • People spend too much time putting out fires.
  • There are constant lines outside the boss’s door.
  • There are no regularly scheduled meetings or employee communications.
  • The “system” is constantly down.

 

Life Insurance: A Flexible Business Tool

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As a savvy business owner, you understand the importance of having key person life insurance to protect your company in the event that you — or a partner — unexpectedly passes away. The policy proceeds can be used to pay off debts, hire a replacement, or buy time until a decision about the future of the company can be made. However, you may not realize that business owners like you can use life insurance for a variety of other purposes. Here are some you may find helpful.

Fund a Buy-Sell Agreement

A buy-sell agreement is a legal contract that establishes who can buy an interest in a company and under what conditions they may do so. For example, a company’s shareholders may agree that if one shareholder dies, the company will redeem his or her shares. Or they may agree that the shares will be sold to the surviving shareholders. A buy-sell agreement can ensure that your family and other beneficiaries receive a fair price for your business interest. Life insurance is often used to fund buy-sell agreements.

Help With Your Estate Strategy

If you are like other business owners, the majority of your estate may be tied up in the value of your business. If you were to die without an effective estate strategy, your business could end up being liquidated in order to pay estate taxes. However, preparing ahead of time can prevent this scenario from occurring.

One approach to consider is establishing an irrevocable life insurance trust that would own a life insurance policy on your life. The trustee of the trust is named as the beneficiary of the policy proceeds, which are then used to pay any applicable estate taxes due on your estate after your death. When properly drafted, the trust strategy avoids estate taxation of the life insurance proceeds.

Life insurance is a flexible, multi-use business tool that can serve and help business owners in numerous ways. Ask your financial professional and estate planning attorney to help you determine how life insurance can be useful in your business situation.