Some owners focus on growing their profits, while others are obsessed with sales goals. Have you ever considered making it your primary goal to set up your business so that it’s more fun to run AND can grow without you?
So why let go of the reins and stop bottlenecking your business? When your business doesn’t depend on you, it is the ultimate asset to own. It allows you complete control over your time. This means you can choose the projects you get involved in. It also means you can choose the vacations you take. If it comes to getting out, a business that can run without you is worth a lot more.
Here are five ways to create a business that’s more fun to run:
1. Give Your Team A Stake In The Outcome
Jack Stack, the author of The Great Game of Business and A Stake In The Outcome wrote the book on creating an ownership culture inside your company. This happens when you are transparent about your financial results, and when you allow employees to participate in your financial success. This results in employees who act like owners when you’re not around.
Check out this case study on one company that did just that through share ownership. The results showed that employee share ownership offered many benefits for both employee and employer. It provided increased job satisfaction and commitment. It also simultaneously improving their performance and level of motivation.
While you don’t need to offer share ownership to give your team a stake in the outcome, you should empower them in a tangible way. They will make better decisions without having to run everything by you. This allows you to stop bottlenecking your business! Most importantly, it gives your employees the opportunity to both contribute to and benefit from your business’ success. When your employees are excited about your business’ goals and successes, you’ll have more fun running the business!
2. Get Your Team To Walk In Your Shoes
If you’re not quite comfortable opening up the books to your employees, consider this simple management technique instead. Whenever your staff bring a question to you, respond with the same answer, “If you owned the business, what would you do?”
This forces your team to walk in your shoes. It will also get them thinking about their question as you would, which builds the habit of starting to think like an owner. Pretty soon, employees are able to solve their own problems.
How does this make your business more fun to run? You can expect fewer emergency calls and emails, less backlog on tasks and communications, stronger leadership skills within your team, and more confidence throughout the business.
3. Vet Your Offerings
Identify the products and services which require your personal involvement in either making, delivering or selling them. Here is how to do so: Make a list of everything you sell. Then, score each offering on a scale of 0 to 10. This scale will rate how easy they are to teach an employee to handle.
Assign a 10 to offerings that are easy to teach employees, and give a lower score to anything that requires your personal attention. Commit to stopping the sale of your lowest scoring product or service. Repeat this exercise every quarter.
Check out this example of a photography business rating its services this way…
When you train your employees on repeatable tasks, you’re accomplishing multiple goals. You are removing yourself as the bottleneck in your company, so that you don’t have to perform every task or service. You are creating a business that is scalable, because other people can do the work you’re doing. You are also growing the value of your business because it will be able to run and gener