As a Small Business Owner, are you trying to do everything?

A post from our Management Skills Development blog

So you've had a great idea, seen that gap in the market and seized the opportunity. Your startup company is taking off and you now have a group of people working for you. From being the one with a plan, you now seem to be the general dogsbody as you have to look after the finances, the HR, manage the team and who-knows-what else?



It's a common enough complaint. The engineer who designs something, which then takes off. Unfortunately, they're now having to run a company, and don't get a chance to actually do what they enjoy.If they wanted to do finances, well, they would probably have studied that after school and not engineering!

So, as you now have to care for things that you never intended to, where can you look? What can you do? Something like an MBA? You haven't the time because you have a business to run!

The solutions that most people in this situation look to can be broken down in two ways.

Family Involvement

Most startup companies that begin to grow typically end up with a family member working in the business. This then becomes the person that you need to fall back on and will be one that you can trust, such as wives having to do accounts, sons making deliveries and husbands doing HR.

But there are often problems when skills fall short, and when family relationships - and expectations - clash with what's needed for work.

Training

The second solution, and the one that is by far the better and more long term focused, is to do training that will help you in specific situations. While you are not a ‘finance person' or a ‘HR person', it is worthwhile looking at doing short, suitable courses that provide you with the basic tools that will at least allow you to deal with most situations; all of which are detailed in relevant manuals.



For example, suitable courses for HR professionals will help you cope with running performance reviews, disciplinary issues or even finding the right people to add to your growing concern. Finance for non-finance managers will equip you with an understanding about the basic finance principles so that you can at least talk about and know things without being left in the dark. Once training has been completed, manuals which are usually provided on courses can be referred to.

Similarly, when you started your new company, did you expect to have to now deal with customer service issues?
The skills which are learnt in such courses as a customer service course will save significant sums of money as well as many headaches. Why not learn some principles on how to avoid problems in the first place? If a problem does arise, do you systematically deal with them the same way each time?

So, yes, you're still doing the accounts, or the HR, or the Customer Service, but now you're able to do them to a better extent, and in less time.

This will all help you do what you're best at, such as the idea that you had initially to start the company.
And isn't your real aim to be really focusing on that next step?