Making Time for Growth

How often do you hear the phrase “work on the business not in it”?

If you want to reap the harvest you need to sow the seeds now...

It’s a cliched phrase I know… but it’s so true for business owners, especially start-ups, that the founder is often the one who works long hours in the business and never has real time to work on it. I know because I’ve been there, not just for my own business interests, but also in supporting others.

Over the last fifteen years I’ve worked with businesses across the UK, Europe, China and the USA. And I’m sad to say I’ve seen the same thing happening over and over again. Business owners working long hours to keep the business running. Of course, the ironic thing is that many of these people set up their own enterprise to give them more time to do things ‘outside of work’, yet now they find themselves stuck working in their business.

Listen and act on advice

I set up my first business in 2004. At the first meeting with my new accountant, she handed me a copy of Michael E. Gerber’s book, “The E myth revisited”. She told me to read it before we next met.

Like most entrepreneurs at that time, I was busy working in my new business, creating contacts, networking and writing proposals so I didn’t have time for reading about business while actually working in the business. After all, I thought to myself, I have an MBA from a top business school, and years of corporate experience so why did I need another book about how to run my business?

It wasn’t until a few years later that I picked up the book again and began to take it in… that’s when I said to myself “if only I had read it when my accountant had instructed me to!”

Value time

Fast forward to 2010 and I started to work with business owners wanting to grow, scale and exit their businesses. The strategies we developed started with ‘getting the owner out of the way’. Too often, they are the blockage to the growth of the business, and therefore obstructs the potential value the business could achieve. They also get in the way of the strategy of the business again because they are too busy ‘doing, doing, doing!’

When I look back to 2000, I was working for a small media agency. The owner was ‘keen to sell’ one day and even offered me a percentage of the business when it happened. With little progress to realise that dream, I left the agency in 2004 to pursue other opportunities. Recently, I saw that the company had at last been sold, some 19 years later.

One of the issues I saw first-hand in that agency was the owner’s need for everything to be approved by him. After all it was ‘his business’ and he had to be sure ‘everything was done right!’. And that issue is the same for most owners. Far too many see it as their ‘baby’ and are sometimes ‘afraid’ to actively delegate to others in the team, so they perpetuate the need for them ‘in the business’. They like doing what they do – especially if they are the typical ‘technician’ business owner who’s great at doing the work. (Think Lawyer, accountant, surveyor, designer, engineer…)

One of the biggest issues this causes for business owners, of all sizes of organisations, apart from stifling the growth of the firm and frustrating their teams, is the burden of the business being ‘on their shoulders’. Sadly, stress for some can also be the downfall of not just the business but the owner and their relationships and health too.

Stifling Growth

So what can be done to help these ‘poor souls’ lift themselves up from the excitement of ‘doing’? The answer starts with ‘understanding’ and that comes from coaching and learning. As we coaches say “awareness is the greatest agent for change”[1].

The key is to look at the how you spend your time and then look at how you ‘should’ spend your time. In the beginning, as a sole business person yes, you probably do everything… but as soon as you decide to grow you need to entrust others to do those jobs which aren’t on your job description (see my article “Working on the business and not in it”)

The key to growth is to split your time into 4 segments which we colour code[2] for ease of understanding. We use Red, Blue, Black and Green for a very simple reason… every pen set, flip chart or white board always has those colours included! One of the methodologies we use for this time segmentation, and described in the book “More Money, More Time, Less Stress” by John Rosling, looks like this:

Red time is for “Admin” activities that support the infrastructure and are non-revenue generating. Red activities are the back-office functions that must be delivered, but can distract you from the core focus of your business. They include things like organising meetings, booking travel, reviewing accounts, managing IT etc.

Blue time is for “short term Revenue-generating” activities that deliver value in the form of products or services to the end customer. Blue activities include marketing, selling and servicing whatever your customers buy from you.

Black time is for “Strategic” activities that add long-term future value to the business. Black activities include things like developing products, defining market positioning, building partnerships and formulating strategy. Black time can also be used to develop strategies to improve the business’ operational effectiveness through business improvement activities such as reducing inefficiencies and driving focussed Blue time).

The fourth element of time is actually a subset of Black time and is all about culture. We call this Green time and it’s about proactively building the culture you want in your business rather than just letting it happen.

With this understanding of the fundamentals the next step in the journey is to simply colour code your diary (imagine you have a traditional paper diary and your colouring pens!). Imagine it now? What colour would next week predominantly appear? Be Honest.

I know, from experience working with many business leaders over the last 15 years that most will look Blue… with a hint of black/ green/ red. And the essence of creating more growth in the business is to create more black time in the diaries of the top team, including the CEO / founder.

That’s where ruthless delegation comes in. To be successful each team member must look at their current task mix and ‘give away’ as many of those things that are not black that they can. It may be your baby but now’s the time to delegate!

Let’s look at an example. If you only work a 50 hour week – which I know is a short week for many founders – the key is to allocate at least 10% of your time to Growth – that’s just 5 hours a week. The best leaders know that to grow they need to dedicate time to that growth and that means them stepping back from the frontline and making plans for the long term of the business. If you’re not spending half a day per week on strategic planning for your business then now’s the time to make that time. Here’s some of the ways we advise clients to achieve their ‘black time needs’:

·      Delegate non-strategic activities (using basic time management techniques)

·      Empower team members with real accountability so they can step up and do the job fully

·      Implement systems to remove or improve routine tasks where you can’t delegate them

·      Outsource those activities that your business needs but could be delivered more effectively by an outside organisation (unless it’s core to your customer experience)

·      Develop your organisational structure to support your empowered teams

·      Learn to let go! (That’s where coaching comes in)

There are many more tools in the time management tool box that can help with creating more space for black time. When you need help we’re here to help!

We run regualr workshops to help you Scale Up and Grow - if you're ready to find out more then please now email me at phil@igniumconsult.com

[1] With credit to Eckhart Tolle

[2] We use Red, Blue, Black and Green for a very simple reason… every pen set, flip chart or white board always has those colours included!