This week on “Mind Your Own Business,” getting the right bums on the right seats.
Last week we spoke about getting the right seats set out in the right places and ensuring that you have crystal clear outcomes and expectations for each of the seats on your bus; this week, I want to talk to you about how you get the right people into those seats.
Now, building a business is a team sport, you can’t do it by yourself and if you try, you will probably fail You need the right people around you so that they can take care of the day-to-day activities but also to help you implement the plans that you have to move your business forward and the quality of those people will be the key factor in how fast you’re able to progress your business and how effectively you can navigate the inevitable challenges that will come your way as your business goes through various stages of growth.
So let’s discuss the various positions you might find yourself in with the seats on your bus; first of all, you’ll have some seats where you’ve got A players occupying those seats; those are people that have got the right attitude, but they’ve also got the right skills, experience and aptitude to do their jobs well.
Now the risk with these people is that you do not pay enough attention to them, and you do not develop them enough and what happens is, over time, they don’t fulfill their potential or they go elsewhere they find that challenge and their development in other businesses.
Make sure that you don’t neglect these people make sure that you diarise one-to-ones you have proper appraisals, that you check in with them, and that you push them to do their best work often these people are the people with the right time and attention will help you take your business to the next level.
Next, you’ll have some seats on the bus where you know deep down inside that this is not working out; things don’t get done correctly, there’s no consistency, whenever you try and put new initiatives and plans in place, they don’t get the traction.
If that is the case, you have an underperformance issue. Nobody likes dealing with underperformance, but it is the reality of being a business owner.
If you’ve got underperformance, deal with it head-on and check out episode 3 of “Mind Your Own Business,” where I give you a couple of tools and tips that you can use to get to the bottom of underperformance the right way
I want to give you a simple four-question framework that you can use to get to the bottom of underperformance issues in your business. Next, you’re going to have some empty seats on your bus, and I would urge you to be proactive about recruitment.
Many businesses leave recruitment to the last minute and therefore find themselves in a position where they have to hire in a hurry and that often leads to a mis-hire because you don’t take the time to go through the recruitment process and to give it the proper time and attention it needs to get crystal clear on the kind of person that you’re looking for and how you’re going to test effectively for that person’s ability to do the job that you want them to do.
Those are broadly speaking the different situations you’re going to find yourself in: seats that are working well in which case you want to make sure that you really take the time to develop those people.
Some seats, where it’s just not working and you’re going gonna have to address that using the stuff that I talk about in “Episode 3” and you’re going to find yourself with some empty seats in which case you need to get proactive about recruitment.
My suggestion is to have a two year recruitment plan tied into your budget and make sure that you give yourself enough time to hire great people.
So look, I know that this is a very easily discussed concept over a couple of videos and not that easy to implement I completely get that, but it is a reality that if you want to work ON your business more, you need to get people that can work IN your business more effectively so that you can offload all of the day-to-day stuff to them to give you the bandwidth and the space to do what you should be doing which is developing that team, getting that bus moving in the right direction and ensuring that you, as the driver, aren’t stuck at the back, looking for luggage when somebody else should be doing that.
If you’re looking for more small business tips, then we’d like to see you every week on “Mind Your Own Business,”
Marco Soares is an award-winning business coach in Sussex and is available if you’d like help implementing these tactics.