The Achilles Heel of Business Owners

This week I want to start by taking about the serial killers of businesses world wide, all of which are often brought upon the entity by the owners themselves. You see, every business, successful ones mainly, have a few things in common that allow them to strive; and that's the saying "Be and let be!".

What does that mean? in life everyone has a role to play, and in business every executive position anchors a hierarchy. Where you are is where you are meant to be, managing the things of your realm. But if you stray and proceed to micromanage every other member of the hierarchy, you risk destabilizing order. You see, you must remove yourself from your duties in order to apply yourself to someone else's. Every time you do this, the structural integrity of the entire pyramid begins to crumble. This is why you have hired various executives, to execute specific tasks.

Your business is your baby, but you cannot do it all yourself; so you hire others to do the things you can't. If they are good enough to remain on your team with your supervision, they are good enough to remain on the team unsupervised after a period. Otherwise, you would not have them on your pay list, would you.

But most times business owners result to micromanaging, its because they have a vision of what something should be. And they hire people to execute this vision, however, in the exact way they see it. Which, my friends, is impossible. Every mind is unique and expecting someone to view things as you do entirely just isn't going to happen.

Look at the most successful businesses in the world. Google for example; this company allows a significant amount of unique thinking from their employees, because they recognize that they've hired them for their unique set of skills, which they will apply to their job. But if you hire them for their skills, and expect them to apply your skills to your job, then why are you wasting money on their salary? You might as well do it all yourself. In other words, micromanaging is completely useless.

Expecting the World

Your employment opportunity is set to a certain degree of demand. Most employees will go above and beyond to make sure things to your benefit get done. But they still get paid the same amount for more effort; and its all to your benefit, not theirs. Offering a thankless job is not a good move, no one will stand for it, and eventually your team will move on because being your lackey just is not anyone's life dream.

Pay VS Workload

Make sure you have a good balance. Although you are offering a quick job, something on the side, if the pay is good for the amount of work, however, there isn't enough work, many may find it easy to jump ship. Here's an example. John gets hired to make you 2 info graphs a week for $20 a piece. That's a "whopping" $40 (note the sarcasm). Although $40 is good for this amount of work, if John gets invited to 4 parties that week, he'll be very likely to skip out on work, because "what's $40 now and days". Get it?

Try offering John 4 info graphs per week. $80 is a lot more appealing than just $40. Yet your price per, hasn't changed.

Finally I'll leave you with one more thing to think about. Your life is your business, but your employees do not reap any of the extra benefits it offers to you. Therefore, your business is not their life. Do not expect it to be. No one likes a slave driver.

© C. J. Leger November 14, 2014