Oz, all-knowing and powerful, aka the business owner, is continually faced with challenges and questions. Emails, text messages, phone calls, and office ‘ drop-ins’ from employees and associates looking for answers to questions can create an overwhelmed business owner. Situations arise when dealing with customers and associates that pull an owner off task and focus on an unhappy customer, buying the copy paper, approving a budgeted expense, and creating a policy on the fly. Routine functions and protocols are often left unattended in an owner’s in-basket for weeks resulting in emergency situations that require immediate attention.
What Should Business Owners Focus On?
A business owner’s focus should be on growing the business, creating revenue streams, and implementing processes and systems that support the operation of the business. The long line at the door of employees, customers, and colleagues is due to a lack of processes and systems to manage the challenges of every business. If you’re an overwhelmed business owner, what are you focusing on?
Let’s approach the solution with a few assumptions: employees are trustworthy, dependable and capable. These are valid assumptions because in this scenario the owner hired them or at least had the final say in hiring them. A business owner, who is Oz, needs to put attention on processes, systems, and training. Every endeavor that lacks a process and employee training will generate chaos. Chaos creates questions and when the answers are not defined in a process and communicated through training means that answers are random and not thought through and more times than not lack consistency. And so it begins, only Oz knows.
The development or introduction of something new into an existing business must be thought through in a systematic and strategic process, this process is a top-down culture. As much as an owner likes to think they are the expert in all areas of management and operations because the business is their creation and they sign the checks, I’d respond with beware of self-importance. An owner who lacks training and expertise in leading teams and managing an organization often believes that involvement in daily and routine tasks is part of the job. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
I want to communicate the solution because it is simple. Where the line gets blurred is when an owner does not use the resources available, the human resource.
Here’s a Five-Step Procedure For You: It All Begins Here
- What needs to be done? Objective
- Who is responsible for doing it? Strategy
- How to get it done? Process
- Who else needs to know? Training
- Where is it recorded? Operations
If you are an overwhelmed business owner and reading this or if you work for an owner who needs to know this, start with a little objective; sorting and processing the mail or answering and processing phone calls. Followed by managing and processing emails and then on to managing and processing prospective customer inquiries. This simple process will open so many doors that direct the next process. A process to those engaged in the business must all know or know where to get the answer, step #5.
For example, sorting the mail; who gets the bills, the promotional materials, the checks, customer communication, customer complaints, contracts, social events, job applications, etc. Each piece of mail needs attention, and the solution is found in who gets that piece of mail and then, how do they respond to their objective. This is the organizational structure, the tasks of building a business and the team that supports the business.
The owner can then manage and grow the business, and operations are in capable hands because there is a system, and folks have been trained in how to get to the solution.
