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How To Successfully Grow Your BusinessIn order to grow your business you are eventually going to need to hire an employee. You need to hire someone that you can train to follow in your footsetps. Here are some tips. I counseled a client who was at a turning point in his business. He wanted to have his business continue to grow and be increasingly profitable. His biggest challenge was that he was a sole proprietor and did all the work himself. In addition to demands from his customers, he also felt demands from his family. How could he handle all this, grow the business, and give everyone the attention they wanted from him?
When I suggested the possibility of an employee to spread the work load, he suddenly became defensive, turned red, and said this was his baby. He had started it, and done everything in the business. He was also concerned that an employee might someday leave him and start a competing business. Oh my, oh my, what to do?
I reminded him that with human children, we help them learn and grow, and watch them finally take wing and fly. I suggested that his “baby” be allowed to grow and have a life of its own, and he have a life of his own, separate from the business. Right now, he is the business, and it could never be sold because of this.
The first step in growing a business by adding additional personnel is TRUST. You need to trust yourself that you can find and train someone to follow in your footsteps, and then you need to trust the employee to do what is desired. The second step is to realize that you may no longer be doing the “technical” work. Rather, you will be supervising someone doing it, instead of you doing it yourself. Just because you have the skills to do the work does not mean that you have the skills to successfully manage someone to get the work done.
In industry, those who have been promoted from “doer” to manager, often fail in their new job. They miss the creativity and fulfillment of doing the job, and lack the interpersonal skills to successfully manage those they depend on to get the job done. They suffer from the “Peter Principle”, where someone has been promoted to their level of incompetence.
How do you grow your business by adding staff and not make a mess of things? This can be done using the following process:
1. Define, and write down, what you want to get done, and exactly how you would like it done, step by step, and the desired results.
2. Define, and write down, what attributes you believe are necessary to successfully perform the work.
3. Recruit possible employees. In some environments, this can be a real challenge as there may be a lack of local workers.
4. Uniformly interview applicants; review their work history, references, and anything else that is relevant.
5. The best way to judge future performance is with the use of legal, psychometric testing. These are written tests that determine a person’s talents, abilities and proclivities. They give an accurate view of who is sitting in front of you, and what you can expect from them.
6. Given that you find the perfect person, share with them your written job description, expectations, and rewards for doing a good job.
7. Provide them the tools and training they will need to succeed to your level of desired expectations, and satisfaction.
8. Explain the metrics (time, money, accuracy, quality, customer pleasure, etc.) that will be used to measure their performance.
9. Introduce them to the clients you want them to handle and have them watch you do the job. Then go with them and watch them do the job. Once both of you are happy, it is your job to supervise their performance, not do their work.
By successfully planning for growth and implementing the
procedures to allow this to happen Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com
ABOUT THE AUTHORJack Donner has managed businesses from startup, through growth and
into maturity. He can help you overcome obstacles in every phase of
business development. Launching something new? Grab Jack’s first steps
to a Successful Launch at http://businessproadvisor.com/
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