Your business offers products and/or services to valuable customers under your leadership. As your week progresses, your ability to adjust reveals how well you are leading. Everyone around you notices how well you are handling the operation by simply looking at you.
Consider these important questions as you attempt to become the leader your team deserves.
Are You Working Constantly?
As the business owner, you might be believe that absolutely everything is up to you. In theory, that is accurate, but how you cover the details determines the health of your business.
During the day, you address the customers’ needs and interact with other businesses including suppliers and providers who are also working during the same hours.
In the evening, you should be able to leave at a reasonable time to enjoy the other aspects of your life. Maybe you are spending every evening doing the work that should have been your priority during the workday.
You might have fallen into the cycle of —> no money, no help.
Keep reading to discover some of the ways you can bring your business under control and step into the leadership role.
Have You Automated Processes?
Instead of hiring people to perform redundant tasks, your business tasks can be automated for much less money. The many advantages of automating backoffice tasks cannot be overstated.
Your time is valuable and automation recovers your time to so you can spend every workday doing what cannot be delegated.
If you are unsure which system to use and how to go about setting up the automation, we need to connect. I can assist with this invaluable effort to reduce your workload.
Contact me – and let’s talk!
Every day of your week should be spent leading, while your systems address the details.
Automation is essential for anyone who has a dream.
What Experts are Helping You?
Maybe you view team members as full-time employees who would have to be paid thousands of dollars each month.
Virtual assistants will complete tasks in a few hours at affordable rates.
Instead of spending your evenings struggling to figure out how to do redundant tasks, you can embrace someone who already has the skills you would have to learn.
Before you assume that some help would be too expensive, you are going to want to make some connections and find some possible solutions.
“Isolation is the dream killer” ~ Barbara Sher
You might wonder what I mean by isolation. Being alone is not isolation. Instead, isolation is attempting to solve every challenge alone. Your solutions might require too much effort if you are unwilling to ask for help.
All of us need people to enhance our thoughts and ideas while relieving the pressure to solve everything perfectly the first time.
In addition, other people can offer resources that are outside of your reach. Imagine having an entire team of experts who are willing to offer insight and assistance upon request.
As you build your network, you will discover that others come to you for similar types of assistance.
Change How You Work
As you review your calendar, your time usage will have to change as your business grows. Too many business owners refuse to switch from worker bee to leader. The result is a business that is stuck in the slow lane.
- Cancel all of the meetings on your calendar if you are not gaining new customers and making sales by attending. Most meetings are an unnecessary waste of valuable time.
- Automate every possible task that requires your intervention to complete a task.
- Add at least ONE team member who will accept work assignments while you focus on training that person to do the work.
- Leadership tasks must take the majority of your time while other people and systems continue to address the daily routine.
Creating a list of your current tasks is one of the most important steps you can take today to transform your role. If you are unsure how you could address each of these tasks, you will want to reach out to a trusted adviser.
All of us spend too much time doing what is comfortable instead of moving out of the comfort zone and into the next level of business leadership.
No one becomes a great leader overnight, but you can make strides if you will identify the tasks that you must automate or reassign.
Your top priority is to find at least one great person for your team!
People Are Not Frozen Food
As you determine what work you must reassign, and to whom, you are going to want to remember the importance of training your team.
Everyone who joins your team is going to require on-the-job training to perform tasks according to your guidelines.
You will never find a person who can instantly assume duties and do everything perfectly like a plug-and-play component in your computer.
People are not made that way.
Consider the difference between natural ingredients in a recipe and the frozen food items that simply require a few minutes to heat in the microwave oven. You get better quality food when you prepare every dish yourself.
People require your direct interaction until you have a team in place. You will want to prepare the tasks and assignments before you go looking for the person.
You might be worried that you simply do not have time to bring on a team member. The truth is that you must embrace the help of other people to make this happen.
Again, isolation will keep you frozen in place trying to figure out how to build a team.
Reach out for some help and discover how many answers already exist.
At Some Point You Will Choose Revenue
Your business has certain aspects that will never fall outside of your jurisdiction. Even if you hire salespeople or managers, you will spend the majority of your time planning the course for your business.
Some of the best business biographies tell the stories of great leaders who were brought in to prevent disaster in the life of a business. Innovation and positioning require a different mindset that must develop in your thought life to protect your business from an early demise.
The business environment changes dramatically every few months, and you cannot be spending your time navigating the daily details and see what is coming.
Your time must be spent networking and staying abreast of current events in finance, business and technology to avoid what so many businesses have endured. Even the largest corporations save large sums of money to be prepared for mergers and acquisitions of a competitive advantage.
Without knowledge of these opportunities, you cannot be ready to move quickly without any hesitiation.
Preparation will separate you from your competitors as you network with people who will share valuable information with you. As you become known as trustworthy, you will be surprised at how many people will contact you with insider information.
No one else can devise the strategy to follow to reach your business goals each year.
Hand Over the Daily Operation
Each task that takes your time today can be reassigned to someone on your team. You will want to be creative as you build a team that can take over daily details.
Include every possible automation idea while you find people who can oversee those systems and deal with your customer support function.
At first, you will stay closely involved to ensure that your business stays on track and everyone becomes engaged in completing the work according to your standards.
MEASURE – MONITOR – ADJUST – CONTROL
Your willingness to train your team will become known in the community. People will want to work for your company when your team speaks of your efforts to embrace new employees and bring them into the fold.
Whatever you require must be measured and guided to excellence. You are the one who sets the standards and others will grow into leadership roles as you assign various tasks to each person.
The process to train your team is outlined inside Equip & Engage
Tough Question: Are You Leading?
As you opened your business, you had a dream. Leadership is required to transform your workday into a manageable effort.
Too many times, we continue to live with frustrations that could be resolved through connections with other people.
Who have you contacted this week in your effort
to become the leader your team deserves?
If you have not asked anyone for help this week, please, refuse to continue in isolation.
We all need people who will encourage us and offer suggestions and resources that solve our greatest challenges.
“Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It’s about impact,
influence and inspiration. Impact involves getting results,
influence is about spreading the passion you have for your work,
and you have to inspire team-mates and customers.”
~ Robin S. Sharma