Boss isn’t just a job title, it’s a sacred duty.
“I don’t want my people to work overtime! But it keeps showing up on every payroll.”
“My manager is embezzling. It didn’t matter so much when cash flow was good, but now it’s really hurting us.”
“My receptionist is chronically late and doesn’t respond to coaching. My clients are frustrated.”
“I have a contractor who is stealing my clients for her side business.”
“I hired a new person and they’re just flailing. Why don’t they just get their job duties?”
“My accountant has been late getting me stuff for three years running and now I owe lots more than I expected. He should have communicated better.”
These are actual things we’ve heard from our clients. They’re real problems with real effects on cash flow, growth, and the sanity of these owners. And they share a root cause.
If you’re a business owner and something is going wrong it is ALWAYS because you’re allowing that to happen. We are the center of these universes and we are the reason things are the way they are. I’m not saying everything is your fault; I’m asking you to take a clear, critical look at the choices you’ve made that created room for dysfunction.
Let’s look at a couple of these real-world examples. First, let’s say you’re paying out serious overtime to a key employee. At first glance it’s easy to think the answer is to tell her to rein in her hours, but if you’ve already said that and you’re on the sixth payroll in a row with this problem it’s time to look more globally. This particular owner has chosen to step back from day to day involvement in the business, so the employee is covering a lot of extra duties. In addition, we had a conversation with him about putting her on salary 16 weeks ago and that option was rejected “in case it’s cheaper to leave her on hourly.” The owner needs to boss like he means it in order to address this entirely solvable problem. In this case, that means putting her on salary immediately and resuming an active presence in the office.
Let’s do some more! “My manager has been embezzling.” Why would you allow this to continue? Fire him today. It doesn’t matter what mitigating factors you think are in place or how important you think he is to the organization; this is a bright line issue. This manager has earned an immediate termination and you should take legal action.
“My receptionist is chronically late.” If you’ve coached her and laid out your expectations regarding timeliness clearly, the problem isn’t her. It’s you. You must outline consequences and then enforce them. Typically, when owners say they can’t control their employees’ negative behaviors it’s because the owners are uncomfortable managing clearly and with enforceable consequences. So try doing that instead. It’s not kind to allow someone to fail by failing to manage them.
“My contractor is stealing my clients.” You wouldn’t do this, so it’s always shocking when someone else does it. While it feels easy to just blame the contractor it’s actually incumbent upon you to examine the systems that allowed the problem. Did you have a written contract in place from the first day that explicitly forbade this option? When you became aware of the first client interaction going the wrong way did you immediately address it with the contractor? What are you doing to stop it now?
“My new hire is struggling.” Did you set aside time to train? Did you rigorously screen candidates for not just the skillset you needed but for their cultural fit for your company? Since you know this is having a negative effect on client relationships why are you continuing to live with it?
“My accountant is always late.” Get a new accountant! There are thousands of them! You don’t have to put up with subpar service from any of your vendors. There are no relationships that are exempt from review, and you should be able to rely on your support team without any concerns. If you can’t do that, juggle the team until you can.
The lesson here isn’t that bad things should never happen. They will! Constantly! People will screw up, clients will go off the rails, change will come. But each of those events is an opportunity to resist feeling like a victim and instead look backwards to see how you got to that point and make change to prevent it from happening again. You’re not at the bottom of a hill with the universe throwing bad things down on you. You’re the pinnacle of your company, immensely powerful within your sphere, and change starts with you.