It doesn’t revolve around you: The importance of delegating in small business
Many small businesses start as the brainchild of one person or a small group of individuals. It’s the entrepreneurial spirit that drives us to stop dreaming, to get the wheels in motion, and to work our backsides off in the hope of running our own business. Yes, OUR OWN business…MY OWN business. Isn’t it ironic then, that these self-referential words have been the cause of so many SMB failures?
I see small businesses struggling all the time, with credit woes up to their ears and a litany of bad choices to their name. There’s no doubting it, there are countless external factors that can bring about a halt in business growth: pitfalls of the economy, poor investment choices, competition, etc. Yet, if there’s one detrimental factor that I realise goes undiscussed by those at the head of an ailing business, it’s the fact they may have failed to delegate the right business processes to the right people.
It surprises me to see how many struggling businesses point outwards as they implode, ready to throw the blame at unseen forces. Like I said, this can often be true, but I’m talking about those small business heads that decide they want to have control over as many factors as possible – all the time. It is, after all, their business.
Many small businesses want one thing: to grow. Of course! The problem arises when those up top want to keep their fingers in as many pies as possible, failing to share the workload with those that, dare I say it, might know better. The fact is we’ve all started our business at a small level. It’s our baby, we’ve raised it, nurtured it, watched it grow, but now we have to let it grow on its own – with the help of others.
As business processes grow and become more time consuming, you need to be able to hire the necessary individuals to take charge of those elements. Ensure you stay on top of the factors that you consider to be your forte, or move on to the sector you’ve always wanted to master and train until you have, and hand the reins of those other horses to the riders you’ve brought up alongside you. The battle that is business can be tough; hold the line.
You don’t know everything. Hell, even if you did, there are simply not enough hours in the day for you to even attempt to work on everything. Many try, many fail. Hire more employees, outsource, scatter certain tasks onto other departments, do whatever you have to do to ensure workloads are balanced.
It’s very easy to have a ‘me, me, me’ approach when running a business, especially if it’s your brainchild, but at the end of the day you’re going to need others that feel as though it’s theirs as well. A sense of ownership is necessary for those by your side to keep slogging away, pushing through the storms to see those rays of success.
To put it simply: you can risk failure and potentially feel the weight of loss on your own, or you could take on a collaborative approach and enjoy the spoils with others.
