So often I am meeting with business owners and through our discussions, I realize just how dependent their business is on them. Although some have team members in place, often the team members are still turning to the business owner for support in decision-making.
I’ll give you an example …
The other day I was talking with a client and he was saying how since working with me, this was the first time he went on vacation and felt it was an actual vacation. In the past, his team members were constantly emailing him and asking him questions. Not necessarily because they weren’t competent, but more so because many of the things they needed to know were all stored in my client’s head. Before working with me, they didn’t have a proper system in place for sharing information with all team members so they could be empowered while he was away to make decisions in his absence.
Before having the procedures manual in place my client often had things in his head that should have been written somewhere for others to refer to, but he didn’t even realize these things were solely in his head because he had become robotic in his day-to-day tasks at the office.
Not only do his team members have a procedures manual they can reference now, but we also created a communication checklist that he fills out with all the pertinent data his team will need on a weekly basis.
So the reason my client was finally able to enjoy a vacation without hearing from his team members is that he had given them the tools they needed to run his business on his behalf.
More importantly, because of these tools (procedures manual and communication checklist), his business was no longer dependent on him and he could enjoy this time away!
So let me ask you these questions …
- Do you have the tools in place to allow your team members to “get inside your head?”
- When is the last time you took a vacation without communication from your team?
- When is the last time you took a vacation without wondering “is everything okay back at the office?”
- Is your business dependent on you???
If you are ready to give your business the independence it needs and you want to learn more about how we can help you set up a procedures manual, let’s chat!