RULE 10

Your time is everyone’s time

I used to work for a guy who had a small company, very successful, very dynamic. The kind of company that gained an advantage from being able to make decisions faster than the big lumbering competitors in the market. Consequently his business grew rapidly, and by the time I started working for him, there were about 40 of us in the company. I stayed around a year, by which time there were 60. And the business was grinding along so slowly it had lost its advantage entirely. So what happened?

The owner had made a very easy but critical mistake – he hadn’t changed his management style as his organization grew. He was still managing it just as he had when it started. Listen, when you have half a dozen employees you can look over all their shoulders and sign off on all their decisions. Hey, it’s your business, your money, you need to be sure they’re getting it right.

Trouble is, if you keep doing that as the business grows, you get spread thinner and thinner. A big organization has more activity, more decisions, more products, more meetings. You can’t get involved in every one because there isn’t time. And how you manage your own time affects how the whole company manages its time.

The reason I only stayed in that company for a year was because I couldn’t stand the frustration. And I was far from being the only one who left. The owner started haemorrhaging staff. You see, we fought to get him to sign off on any decisions because he was so busy micro-managing everyone else, or he changed his mind after finally making decisions (see previous Rule). All of which meant we couldn’t get on with our jobs, we missed deadlines, we let down customers and suppliers, cheques took ages to issue (signing cheques never seemed as urgent to him as all the other stuff on his to-do list) and everything started to stagnate. He was a lovely guy and we all liked him – he recognized he was slowing things up and never blamed us for the delays, but somehow he never did anything about it either.

So what should you do when your company grows? What should my old boss have done? Well, you need to have people around you that you trust – that’s essential – and then delegate to them. It’s much, much harder than you think to hand over decisions about your own company than it was when you worked for someone else. But if you want your business to thrive, you have to do it. Just put your hands in the air and step away from the detail. Concentrate on the big picture, the critical decisions, the direction of travel. Only manage the crucial people at the top of your company, and let them manage everyone else.

Once you’ve mastered that skill, you’ll free up your staff to get on with their jobs, yourself to concentrate on the decisions that really matter, and your enterprise to grow and flourish.