Harriet runs a multi-million dollar business that is experiencing growing pains. To avoid being a bottleneck, she delegates to her staff but soon discovers that office expenditures are out of control and the company has a dip in its profitability. She also discovers that her team missed out on upselling opportunities.
When you experience growing pains, it’s not enough to delegate. It’s important to implement the systems or processes that help you to lead responsibly. Consider these tips to set yourself up to lead powerfully:
1. Communicate and Align All Goals
As your company grows, remember to communicate the strategic direction and goals clearly and often. For one of my mentoring clients, we aligned the company’s goals with each of the team member’s goals. Each team member began to understand and track how their goals directly related to the company goals. They were able to see their part in the success of the company establishing greater buy in and engagement in the company’s success.
(If you’re attending the Wake Up Profitable Boot Camp on Friday and Saturday, you’ll have an opportunity to tighten up your goals and objectives into an existence system so that you achieve them.)
2. Set Up A Budget with Accountability.
Setting up the meeting is a good task to delegate but, like Harriet, you may soon discover outrageous food bills for the company meetings. Without a budget, her staff overspent on snacks and beverages. To get a handle on it, outline and communicate what you’re delegating so the person or persons know the parameters, like establishing a specific budget for each manager or meeting.
3. Lead with Oversight Processes
While Harriet hired a manager to train her customer service representatives, she had no training standards in place. While she trained the manager, there were no checklists or training guide to ensure the training was evaluated or implemented with the company’s strategic direction in mind.
She completely removed herself without any process in place to see if the manager she trained was training others consistent with the company’s standards. She discovered the hard way that it’s important to have systems in place when delegating. She saw her sales decline, largely because the representatives were missing out on upselling opportunities.
She then had to circle back with the manager to establish standards, develop a training manual, and create a skills checklist to ensure employees received the required training. Each person was re-trained, received monthly mini-training refreshers to keep the training in existence, and established annual recertifications. With this multi-step training process in place, she was able to ensure the upselling opportunities were top of mind and gained control over the company’s profitability.
Each of these lessons is grounded in the assumption that you’re regularly reviewing and addressing your metrics and your numbers. After all, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Take a constructive look at your growing business and identify where you might circle back so that you can take a giant leap forward.
