Do you remember why you started your business?
Maybe you had a vision for the meaningful impact or lifestyle you wanted to create?
We often find business owners working in a high-pressured job and stuck in the ‘day-to-day’.
You find yourself doing everything when you should be leading everything.
As your business experiences a growth curve, every area of your business will require more.
- More marketing
- More sales and customers
- More product or service development and delivery
- More operational requirements
- More financial management, and
- More people.
Each function of your business will demand more time and energy, but that does not mean it should be your time and energy.
A key mistake we see business owners make is this:
- I will do more
- I will work harder
- I will sleep less
The paradigm shift is to go from ‘technician’, or the person with their hands on the tools, to ‘entrepreneur’ - the person leading your team towards the vision.
The goal is simple: How can you build a business that works without you, or not so much of you?
However, without the right advice or coaching most business owners struggle to achieve this.
What does micro-managing mean for the business owner?
The main things we see, are:
- You don't have a business, but a job
- The small business cannot grow - your time is on lower value work, not high value ON the business, and
- Your employee’s get frustrated and not empowered - you are a blockage.
What do you need to do to eliminate micro-management in a small business?
- Must have the right mindset with clarity around your vision
- Core values need to exist, and be lived
- Systems and processes in place (eg. operational manual, sales playbook etc)
- Software, for efficiency and automation where possible
- Trust within the team
- The right people in the right roles, and accountable - you must invest in your people
Tips to help eliminate a small business owner micro-managing
- Change your mindset
- Build the habit of delegating, coaching, training and supporting you team as you hand things off
- Put any other structures in place to curb the micro-managing temptation, like working out of the office more
- Read “The E-myth: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It”
- Listen to the Manager Tools casts (the #1 downloaded business podcast) - started with those on delegation
- Consider hiring an EA or VA to manage the low value things on your plate
- Continually ask - what can I delegate?
From our experience firstly of being direct reports to terrible managers, then being shit managers in our own business - to now being effective managers, we put together the ‘Kick-Ass Manager’ online course. Check it out.
