Let me guess, at times you feel overworked and overwhelmed. You are wearing multiple hats and functioning in multiple roles for your company. Sadly, many business owners can not see the reality of that situation. They consider this normal. While it may be normal for the first year or so, you should not be adding hats each and every year; you should be removing hats. Eventually, the only role you should have is to be the CEO (chief executive officer) of your business.
To help you understand this process, draw your current organization chart with boxes for all your key functions (e.g. sales, operations, accounting, customer service, etc.) and write in the names of your people, including yourself, in charge of those functions (boxes). Now, time for a reality check. As the owner, how many of the boxes have your name at the top? Or, how many boxes (job functions) do you jump into on a daily basis to help out? How many different hats are you truly wearing? If you are wearing more than 2-3 hats, you are at risk for being ineffective, overworked, unproductive and eventually burning out. How can you lead your company, refine your vision, set critical priorities, draw up an action plan, and keep everyone accountable for hitting the plan if you are overly busy helping out in the factory, order department, shipping, accounting, sales, customer service, fixing computers, on and on? You can't -- being a jack-of-all-trades and master of none (especially in the leadership category) makes you look and function like a jack-in-the-box ... foolish, hoping up and down, and going no where fast.
As the business owner, your job is to create jobs, not work jobs. Your role is to define the boxes and how the work is to be done in those boxes (roles, responsibilities, standards, outcomes, etc.). Next, hire good people and train them on the work to be done in their respective box and what is clearly expected of them. Then let your people do their jobs. Hold people accountable but stay the heck out of their boxes - that's why you pay them. Using a sports metaphor, be the head coach for your company, not a lineman in the trenches of your business getting beat up and roughed up.
Daniel Murphy
The Growth Coach
Business Coaching Franchise System