Minding Your Business: Sept. 2000, Learning To Let Grow

Do you wear many hats within your company? If so, you are like most small business owners in the landscape industry. In fact, most owners have so many responsibilities, they do not have enough time to work on the business. Instead, they spend most of their time working within the system.

Running a business is like coaching a team. Can you imagine trying to play a game and coach at the same time? On the field, a coach cannot see everything that is going on around him or her. From the sidelines, however, they have the opportunity to look at the team as a whole and find strengths and weaknesses. The same holds true for running a business. As an owner, you must conduct yourself as a coach every day. For most small business owners, this is an extremely difficult task. It is easier to do something yourself than to coach or train others to do the same task. The problem is, this draws the owner back onto the playing field and keeps him or her from actually coaching.

TAKE A STEP BACK. Through motivation and training, employees will be able to assume more responsibility, allowing owners to spend more time on planning, organizing and running the business.

To become a good coach, we need to start with ourselves. We have to look at what we do on a daily basis that restricts us from spending more time coaching others. Most likely, you will find that you are spending too much time tending to tasks that can be addressed by other employees. And, in many cases, these are smaller, less important jobs that could be easily delegated to foremen or supervisors, such as handling customer communication, reviewing invoices and scheduling crews.

As owners, we need to focus on the pressing responsibilities of planning, organizing and motivating others. If we can train others to perform the smaller tasks, we will have more time to focus on the pivotal issues associated with running a business.

A good owner has the ability to step back, look at their business and determine the responsibilities of each position within the organization. Once we determine what tasks we can delegate to capable employees, we have to set aside time to train them to perform those tasks. This tends to be the most difficult step in the process and can take longer than performing the actual task. But remember, we are making an investment that produces great returns in the long run. The time spent today will reward you with more free time in the future.

Once we relinquish some of our responsibilities, we must stay committed to our goal of delegating tasks. Consistently monitor progress with weekly staff meetings to determine whether the training was successful. The goal is to continue the training until the employee(s) demonstrate the ability to perform the task. While doing this, we need to be careful – we cannot fall back into the trap of reassuming responsibility for the tasks that we delegated. If you find that the person you trained is not performing well, you have to assess your training process and provide additional guidance.

Stay committed to the process. We have the tendency to give up too easily and revert back to old ways. In that case, the owner is back on the playing field missing out on what is going on around them. When working with smaller contractors, I have had numerous employees tell me they wished the owner would let go of some responsibility. In most cases, they feel strongly that they can perform certain tasks better than the owner. If you feel you are wearing too many hats and do not have time to work on your business, take a few minutes to look at your company. Ask your employees what tasks they feel they could take on, train them and let them give it their best shot. You might be surprised with the results. Hopefully, you will have more time to work on your business instead of being caught up in it.