Succeeding through fortune cookies

It is hard to write about running in a small business in a way that doesn’t sound like you read it in a fortune cookie, “Be honest and you will succeed”, “Do not do work that can be done by your employees or you will never have time to sleep.” There is a reason for that. A lot of the ideas key to success are not rocket science, it is actually putting them into practice that is the hard part….

I work well over 40 hours a week and often I resent that I think other people in the company are not working as hard. My partner pointed out a few things I was doing that could be done by other employees. This is one of the more difficult habits — and it is a habit — for managers of all levels to learn, including small business owners. Have everything, and I do mean, everything, done by other people whenever possible. Your employees are not as highly paid as you, so if they can do a task, even if it only takes 15 minutes of your time, you should be forwarding that email to your employees to follow up.

Those fifteen-minute tasks can easily add up to hours a day. Besides, each of those tasks that your assistant or assistant manager or whoever performs is one more bit of experience for that person. You definitely do not want to be the only person in the company who knows how to set up a conference call.

There are a lot of reasons for not delegating work, none of them very good. These include not wanting to inconvenience workers or appear petty by delegating small tasks, procrastination to avoid difficult decisions…