Hi

John is the owner and CEO of a small contracting company with eight employees. On the afternoon he called me to ask for my help he had spent most of the day putting out (metaphorical) fires.

Despite being in demand he told me that he was too busy to take on any more work and that he kept running out of cash. A not uncommon problem for a small business.

It soon became clear where John’s principal problem lay when I asked him which of his eight employees dealt with day-to-day administrative matters; the answer was none of them.

If you don't have an administrative assistant then you are one, I told him. You'll never free up the time to run your business properly if you try and do everything yourself.

We agreed that he would audit where he spent his time during the day, in half-hour segments, for the next two weeks and that we’d then meet to identify the tasks he performs which he could either delegate to an assistant or replace with one of his employees. We analysed each of these tasks as falling into one of three categories:

A – administrative tasks that could be delegated to a willing assistant

S – specialist (needed to be done by someone qualified but not necessarily John)

O – tasks which only John could perform.

Unsurprisingly John was spending more than half his time in the two former categories dealing with customer queries, scheduling jobs, placing orders, preparing and sending invoices, paying bills, chasing overdue debts, bookkeeping and payroll.

And when we analysed the time that John spent with his employees, it was more often than not telling them how to undertake a particular job rather than just what needed to be done and letting them use their own skills and resources. This had led to a culture in which they would come to John with problems rather than finding a solution themselves or suggesting a solution to discuss with John.

His periodic cash flow problem was even easier to solve. Because John was doing everything himself customer invoices were often being sent late and queries dealt with by John when he got round to them rather than systematically by an assistant.

John needed to shift his mindset from that of technician to that of a business owner and entrepreneur. He needed to get comfortable with delegating the administrative aspects of his business and letting his employees carry out their jobs without being micro-managed.

It is never an easy transition for a business owner to loosen the reins. I've been working with John for several months now and he's making good progress. Most importantly of all he gets home early enough to spend time with his wife and children and no longer has to go into the office on weekends.

If you know someone like John who could use the help of a business coach to grow their business and gain time freedom please tell them to give me a call. They’ll thank you for it.

Noel Guilford