ONE POWERFUL TOOL FOR MANAGING GROWTH
Several of my clients are experiencing a sharp growth curve, having increased their business by about 50%. Sounds great, right? It is, but business growth comes with its own set of issues and challenges.
When do I hire help?
How do I deliver on the promise of what I have always done with all this new responsibility?
How do I maintain this pace or better yet, grow even more?
There are answers to each of these concerns. The one I want to focus on, however, is the one answer that applies to all of these questions:
Develop your people.
As a small business owner, you likely wear multiple hats. You are the accounting, sales, marketing, operations, and every other department all at once. As you grow, you must hand off responsibility for some or all of these functions to other people, so that you are able to take on the new tasks necessary to move your business forward.
Develop your team in a way that raises everyone’s confidence, and trust that the work will be done with the same level of competence and dedication as when you were doing it. As work progresses or is completed, staff can report back on results, and make adjustments if necessary.
Does this make you feel a bit like handing the car keys to your teenager? That’s okay. Start slowly and purposefully. Here are a few tips to get started:
Gradually introduce more responsibility with each decision to get a clear understanding of how your employees think.
This gives you the opportunity to bridge the gap from how they think about a task or problem and how you needthem to think about it. Later, they can operate nearly autonomously, except for very big decisions.
Exhibit persistence and patience.
These are hallmarks of the process. The goal is the development of trust between manager and team member, which allows both parties to advance in a relatively safe environment. Delegation is not an exact science. Trial and error is par for the course, so allowing space to make (and correct) mistakes, is vital to your success.
The people you have will develop into dependable team members who can easily act appropriately, with confidence and integrity, without having to constantly come to you for questions.
As an added bonus, giving team members more responsibility in this way is great for morale because expectations are clear as they grow in knowledge and ability.
You guide the vision and the team members get it done. Imagine having:
A smart plan for developing people in your organization
A few extra hours per day to work on something bigger/better.
A team that is high performing AND happy.
With smart delegating, your company moves forward due to contributions by all with limited stress and turmoil.
