BEING A LEADER AND A WORKER AT THE SAME TIME
When a business owner is starting a business, he or she wears as many hats as is demanded of them. "Jack-of-all-trades" is a term that most new business owners resemble to get the business up and running. This can be habit-forming and will inevitably slow expansion if this operating basis continues. The complete statement is actually "Jack-of-all-trades, master of none." This statement has some workability in getting a business off the ground, but as time goes on, the business owner must master each area of the organization. Once they have mastered the key areas, they can turn the management of those areas over to others. These basic areas of any organization are:
Product and Service delivery lines
Promotion and Marketing
Personnel—hiring and training
Profit and financial management
Management and organization structure
Standardization and Quality control
Replication
The Expansion, Roller-coaster, Contraction, or Failure of any business or organization, is 99% created by the leader or leaders. We have this term "Lead by example," which means:
"You're guiding others through your behaviors and inspiring them to do the same as you. When you lead by example, you provide a path to direct others down so that everyone is working toward a common goal with the same purpose.
A leader makes it natural for people to feel like they want to do the best they can for the organization they work for. When you lead by example, you can accomplish this and have a workplace that's full of trust, confidence, and purpose. Be the person others choose to follow. Provide a vision for the future. Provide inspiration."
When the leader is a worker in their own business, that is what everyone else will do. Even if the person you hired had been trained to be a manager, they would tend to drop their management skills in favor of being a worker because that will be the operating basis of that business.
Why don't leaders lead? They either have not been trained to lead, or the usual reason is that they don't see management roles as important as doing a specific job.
When business owners haven't ever been successful managers or executives themselves, they won't know what the qualities are that make up a good manager or executive.
SOLUTION
Study up on what a good executive does. Find out what organizational things have to be in place for managers to manage. Talk to managers who are actually managing and not doing a full-time job that other personnel should be doing. Write up the viewpoint you have, the responsibilities and procedures of each job you are holding, and start delegating these jobs to others. Leaders can do jobs and occasionally may have to jump in and help in an overloaded area. Still, they should get HR to handle the situation quickly so that they can get back to leading the organization into the future with orderly expansion.
The toughest part of business expansion is getting through the management stage. Once business owners understand it and value these positions, it's a downhill ride after that with mass expansion.
You can be a leader and a worker, but you have to set your daily schedule to wear each hat successfully. In the early stages of building a business, you will have to, but as you expand, you will have to move more of your time to lead others and ensure your staff has what they need to do a good job.
Let me know if this was helpful.
Sincerely,
Graham Payne
Email or call me at 727-243-1336 and ask about our Monthly Management programs. You can also find out more about our programs on our website.