Is it weak to ask for help?

When you have a business challenge is your first thought, ‘How can I fix it?’ or ‘Who can help me fix it?’

I’ll bet you generally go into the solve-it mode, I used to do that too…and being totally transparent sometimes I still do!

As an entrepreneur, it can be difficult to release the reins and allow others to work on your ‘business baby’. You’ve put so much into building up your business you want everything to be perfect.

Both in my corporate and entrepreneurial life, I have struggled with delegating the time consuming administrative and technical tasks to others, as I was SURE they couldn’t do it as well and/or as quickly as me, and if I was going to have to teach them and then check it afterwards, I may as well have done it myself!

But I wasn’t doing myself any favours, I was busy being busy, my business wasn’t growing as quickly as it should have been because I was trying to do ALL THE THINGS, and my team wasn’t learning or developing.

The whole idea of recruiting and building a team is to free you up to do the high-value stuff, like speaking with potential clients and delivering excellence to your paying clients, it should also mean that you can go on holiday WITHOUT your laptop, iPad and iPhone, take the afternoon off to relax in the spa, or go to your children’s school play without worrying about what’s happening in the office.

When I’ve broken down the reason why most business owners lack trust in their team, it’s because they fear they’ll get things wrong, that they’ll change the winning formula that has gotten them this far.

Like my client Alice, who was struggling to focus on building her business because she was caught up trying to get the day-to-day things completed.

Her company mobile phone would not stop ringing, as her managers referred any difficult customers to her rather than dealing with them themselves.

This meant that the majority of her customers had her number and would just call, rather than talk to the manager for the relevant store (even though they’d be seeing them face to face regularly). The head office line hardly rang, so Alice’s assistant wasn’t inundated with calls. Alice felt trapped.

After spending some time with Alice it became apparent that her caring and maternal nature had meant that her managers didn’t even attempt to solve tricky problems, they just called Alice for the answer.

My first suggestion was to change her mobile number and remove it from all the business literature. Each store and store manager had a telephone number and there was a number for head office too.

We delivered our signature management training programme to the managers and their deputies, created a peer coaching group and created a crib sheet for the managers to be sure they understood the policies and processes so that they took ownership for managing issues and didn’t need to disrupt Alice, except for emergencies.

A month after the phone was disconnected Alice said “I feel like a weight has been lifted, I don’t know why I didn’t do that sooner, thank you”

Delegating is always a major subject in our Management and Leadership Coaching Programmes, so I thought I’d share a few tips to help:

Play to your strengths

Know what you are good at and stick to it. When you started your business you were a team of one and had to get everything done (sales, products, accounts, marketing, logistics). Now you can buy in support, either through outsourced providers (accountants, VA, social media, contractors) or employees.

Get the right support in and give them the autonomy to deliver. Getting support doesn’t mean that you have to lock yourself into a full-time permanent contract. If you are concerned that your business might experience a downturn (or you know the support you need is seasonal), you can hire casual staff or offer a contract on a fixed-term and/or part-time basis.

Take the time to train your team

Have you ever said, “By the time I teach them how to do it, I could have done it myself!” Ten years ago this would have definitely been me, but by the time I’d had to complete that task three or four times, I was wishing that I had trained someone, ANYONE else in my team to do it.

As annoying as it sounds, you have to invest time to free up time, whether it is setting up a system, process or training an individual and this is the same thing I say to clients who are too busy to find time the hire the staff they need – it’s chicken and egg! A fully trained and empowered employee means more freedom for you.

Train your team and have them document the process and keep it up to date, then whenever you have a new joiner or promote a team member you have a process manual ready!

Block out your time

It is really easy to get distracted by the admin needed to run a business even with an administrator or VA on staff, so block your time for specific tasks.

I do write down my Must-Dos for each day and the time that I am dedicating to them. Then at the allocated time I close down my emails and put my phone on airplane mode so that I keep focused.

I use a variation of the Pomodoro method. Instead of working for 25-minute sprints with a 5-minute break, I work for an hour or 90 minutes and then take a longer break.

This helps me to focus on a particular project as I find that it can take a while to get into the zone and once I get there it can be difficult to stop (and I like to complete tasks in one hit if I can).

Change your location

When I first started my business, I worked from home and would spend the first couple of hours in the day, cleaning and tidying before I started working and then would be carrying out other chores too. Have you ever popped into the supermarket to come out two hours later?

It didn’t take long to realise that being at home wasn’t helping my focus and so I found a co-working space to work from. The change of location was just what I needed, there were no dirty dishes or laundry to distract me but lots of businesses to connect with.

Once you have a team (working alongside you or remotely) it can be easy to be constantly distracted with their tasks and challenges. I used to struggle when I overheard a conversation that I wanted to chip in on; my ears would switch on and the focus on my task would go flying out of the window.

If you are constantly being interrupted by your team asking for your help (for outcomes that they are capable of delivering) or you can’t resist ‘offering’ assistance and keeping all the real decision making for yourself, it’s time for you to find somewhere else to work from at least one day a week, to give you and your team some space to be great.

The saying that, what you don’t know can’t hurt you, was definitely true in this circumstance. If there is truly an emergency your team will get in touch, don’t worry it will be fine.

Try these tips and you’ll get the help you need to take your business to the next level.

Need help hiring the help you need or developing the leadership skills you or your team need, schedule a call to see how we can help you.

Preparing for Life's Dramas

I spend a lot of time talking to friends and clients about time management and pre-planning; because you never know what can happen and leaving things to last minute can lead to disaster.

Don’t get me wrong sometimes a last minute quick and dirty solution can work, but it’s never the highest quality of work. It’s never the thing you’re most proud of. It’s just a way to get out of a tough situation and this week I found out how important my own preplanning is!

My plan this week was to hit the ground running. I spent a lot of December making plans for all the great things I was going to do come January 2019 and already had a calendar full of meetings and pre-work for training and talks scheduled for the first quarter of the year.

Instead, I am lying in my bed recovering from eye surgery with strict instructions to move from side to side every hour and while I am VERY bored, I’m not panicking because I have a plan.

I set my yearly, quarterly and monthly outcomes, so while I’ve had to move things around a bit, I can still move forward with my business.

To ensure that life’s little challenges don’t put the breaks on your business, here are 5 tips to help you:

1. Set clear objectives for your day, week and month - with milestones dates for each element, so that you don’t leave things to the last minute.

2. Allow extra time to complete your tasks - It’s easy to commit to a quick turnaround, but giving yourself an extra day allows for interruptions (key for me in the HR space where urgencies often pop up).

3. Don’t try to complete tasks in one sitting - planning in time to sit and review your work can be the difference between an A and a C (or a repeat customer rather than a one off).

4. Build your team, it’s important not to be a single point of failure. Work with others so that they can take the reins if you are unable too.

5. Learn from things that don’t go well. It’s always good to review how a project went and work out how it could be done better the next time. I have templates and process flows for some tasks, to help things run smoothly and ensure my knowledge isn’t all contained in my mind.

Using the tips above, I've been able to have a couple of strategy calls today and activate voice recognition on my laptop to write some content, while sticking to my recovery instructions.

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Are you Time Poor ?

I’ve been building my CEO skills, with a course to ensure that I know my business stuff as well as I know my HR stuff; and I’ve found that the biggest challenge that I and my fellow business owners have is time.

Time to create, deliver and do all the things that you need to make sure your business runs smoothly.

Can you relate?

It’s so easy to say I’ll do that when I get the time, but to be honest you don’t find time. You have to make time!

I worked with a Manager that was over-worked, he had the budget to hire some more people into his team, but he didn’t have the time to recruit. I’d find candidates and by the time he’d looked at their applications, and shortlisted, they’d have found other employment. He’d miss telephone interviews for client emergencies. In the end I had to block out time in his calendar and sit with him to shortlist and interview. He was able to get some highly skilled additions to his team and get his life back.

But first he needed to make the time investment!

How do you schedule your time to make sure you have time to be proactive, instead of just reacting? 

I use a weekly planner that I stick above my desk, so that I can schedule in what I’m doing and see my availability and to get my tasks done I use my version of the Pomodoro Technique (instead of 25 minute blocks, I do 90 minute blocks). 

Effectively managing time and resource isn’t exclusively an issue for small businesses owners; when I worked corporately, one of the main reasons we’d get a contractor in was because they could focus 100% on the task they were hired for without all of the distractions and it’s the reason why our clients work with us, we have the experience and knowledge to get the HR work done without added drama.

It’s time to make time for the things you want to do for your business, block out the time and turn off the distractions!

If you need to build or scale your team but are struggling to find the time to even THINK about it? Get our free guide to hiring and outsourcing for Small Business here

Trying to find some extra hours in the day?

Have you heard this amazing statistic?

Small business CEO’s spend an average of 20% of their day on HR tasks

That's a day a week!

A lot of clients that I speak with cite being too busy as a reason why some essential HR things don’t get done, and the reason why they need Eden Mayers HR to whip them into shape!

The majority of their battles can be put down to one thing …

DELEGATING

Now HR is my business so I spend a lot of time on and with it, however I can relate when it comes to other elements of my business. I like numbers and data analysis but it’s the job of Daniel in my team! I do have a tendency to start some analysis and take a bunch of time working on it, then get frustrated and get shown how it’s really done (sometimes in moments) with fancy excel formulae and macros. The same applies to making changes to the website!

My business is my baby so I sometimes struggle to hand things over and then complain about a lack of time. Delegating is always a big thing in our Management and Leadership coaching programmes, so I thought I’d share a few tips to help you find those extra 4 hours in the day:

Play to your strengths

Know what you are good at and stick to it. When you started your business you were a team of one and had to get everything done, now you have the ability to buy in support either though outsourced providers (accountants, VA, social media, contractors) or employees. Get the right support in and give them the autonomy to deliver.

Take the time to train

“By the time I tell them how to do it, I could have done it myself!” You have to invest time to free up time, this is the same thing I say to clients who are too busy to find time the hire the staff they need – chicken and egg! A full trained empowered employee, means freedom for you.

Block out your time

It is really easy to get distracted by the admin needed to run a business. Block your time, unless there is an emergency (or holiday) I do my admin on Fridays. I schedule in time to write blogs, call clients, record vlogs, do Facebook lives, as well as delivering to clients. It means my team know when I’m available and I know what I need to achieve during the day.

Change your location

People can’t asking you things if they can’t find you. I have a few local coffee shops and restaurants that I can escape to, put my phone on airplane mode and hook onto their wifi! I can get a days work completed in half the time, when I have no interruptions. I’m on a train for 3 hours tomorrow and I already have a work plan.

Try these time saving hacks and see if you find some extra time in your day to focus on the things that really matter.

Delegate or Drown

As an entrepreneur it can be difficult to release the reins and allow others to work on your ‘business baby’!

Both in my corporate and entrepreneur life, I have struggled with delegating the time consuming administrative and technical tasks to others, as I was SURE they couldn’t do it as well and as quickly as me and if I was going have to teach them and then check it afterwards, I may as well have done it myself! But I wasn’t doing myself any favours, I was busy being busy, and my team wasn’t learning or developing.

The whole idea of delegation is to free you up to do the high value stuff, like speaking with potential clients and delivering 100% to your pay clients, it should also mean that you can go on holiday WITHOUT your laptop, iPad and iPhone or go to your children’s school play without worrying about what’s happening in the office. After all you became an entrepreneur to have freedom and flexibility.

I’ve had many clients say they are so busy, they need help but they have no time to find someone or they just can’t find someone who they can trust to do thing just how they want it done! Fact is, it doesn’t matter how it’s done, if the end result is want you want.

So with this in mind, here are a few signs that it’s time to start delegating:

• Its 3pm, you’ve been working all day, but haven’t completed any of the MUST DO tasks on your list.
• You’ve just spend the last 3 hours trying to make ONE SIMPLE CHANGE to your website.
• You can’t remember the last time you switched your laptop before 10pm.
• You can’t remember the last time you had a no technology day. (email/mobile/facebook/twitter/instagram).
• Some days you get to the end of the day, have been ridiculously busy but can’t name a thing you’ve done and so have no sense of accomplishment.
• Your only solution (on a regular basis) is to just work through the night, so you can get everything done.

If this is you, it’s time to consider what tasks you can delegate and then train, coach and mentor your team or find a service that you can outsource some tasks to.

To find out more, check out how we can support you here.