How to delegate

 

Show me a small business owner who doesn’t like to delegate, and I will show you someone who will not be able to grow beyond a certain point. Small business owners are called Chief Everything Officers (CEO) who are required to take care of all aspects of running a business. If you do not have good time management skills you are going to run out of steam at some point.

A big part of time management skills is learning to delegate tasks to others. The problem is, not everyone feels comfortable with delegation for the fear that if they do not take care of tasks themselves they will not be completed to their satisfaction. This is a myth! With proper planning it is possible to successfully delegate tasks and get them completed to your satisfaction. After all, there are only 24 hours in a day, and you have to go to sleep at some point! So what is the secret to successful delegation?

1. Prioritise – Before you can delegate you have to identify the tasks that can be delegated. The ideal list should contain tasks that are not absolutely critical or those that can be defined and explained to others and those that can be completed in a prescribed time frame. You have lean on the side of more delegation when going through the list. Looking at the importance and urgency of the tasks also helps you prioritise the long list of tasks and assign them to appropriate people.

2. Divide – When the task is too big or difficult for one person to understand or complete it helps to divide it in small pieces that can be farmed out to different people who have necessary skills to complete them.

3. Standardise – This is the most important step that helps you delegate the tasks and still feel comfortable that they will be completed to your satisfaction. By standardising the process for how to complete tasks you can remove any rooms for error resulting from different people handling it. When you think about it this is how all the franchise operators are able to grow and still maintain the quality of their products and brand.

4. Document – To remove any further doubt about the quality you can take standardization one step further and document in writing all the steps along with other necessary information required to complete the tasks. Again, you must be familiar with the standard operating procedure manuals that franchisors produce to help standardise operations across the entire system.

Finally, the success of delegation depends as much on your personal qualities as it does on the person you are delegating to. You have to be open and flexible to accept the fact that others are equally capable of completing the tasks as yourself, albeit in a different way. You have to learn to let go and not micro-manage all the details of the tasks. Otherwise, it defeats the purpose of delegation.

3 Tips to Make Your Meetings More Productive

 

“It is time for a business-related meeting.”  How do those words make you feel?  Do you feel like something productive will come out of the congregation, or think that it is going to be waste of time and productivity at hand?

So, how can you ensure you always host the former feeling?  Consider ways to host productive meetings at your place of business.

Accountability

If each member of the meeting is held accountable for particular areas of the business, disseminating associated information at each meet, there is greater chance of achieved momentum.

Set goals and minor achievements leading up to each meeting to-be addressed.  Make one member accountable for reporting whether goals reached or not.  Creating accountability helps team members ‘visualize’ contributions to the business.

 

Consistency

What happened to last week’s meeting?  It was cancelled; Bob had to leave early to get his children from school.  This week, it’s pushed back to Friday afternoon, a time when members wish they were driving home rather than staying at work.  Wavering consistency does not build respect and high regard for the contents of the meeting.  If the meeting is not held in high regard, it becomes less effective and productive.

Ensure your team is responsible for being present at each meeting.  Have the meeting take place at scheduled times on assigned days and make an attempt to keep time and place uniform.

 

Participation

Consider the layout of a rugby team’s defensive strategy.  Each player on the field is assigned an area of the field, a particular position.  Each player has a set purpose and goal every time the ball is recycled.  The level of participation at a business meeting should be similar.

Is each member assigned a function in the meeting – a facilitator, a recorder, a mediator, etc?  Furthermore, does the structure of the meeting invite opportunity for all members to participate, engage, and feel respected and valued?  Meetings demand time away from the desk and individual contributions; do participants feel their time away is valued and respected?  

Make an outline for each meeting, addressing agendas and individual contributions.  All members will be prepared for what’s to come, optimizing the time available.

People have to be held accountable, while at the same time executives and leaders need ensure all team members are engaged and contribute.  Teams need leaders who can effectively direct, using given time at hand.  How productive can you make your meetings?

7 Common Mistakes that Impact Cash Flow and How to Avoid Them

 Cash flow is a lifeblood for small business. Fail to plan properly for the month-end cash flow needs and you will start losing your sleep when the time arrives to write paychecks for employees or to pay vendor bills. 

That’s why it is very important to keep a keen eye on money coming in and going out, and plan for those times when you will need significant cash outflow. Not only that, but you have to take into account unexpected emergencies that will force you to spend money here and now. Managing your inventory, account payables and receivables can help you better manage your cash flow.

In addition to those tips, you should also look at the obvious as well as not-so-easy-to-find ways in which small business owners squander cash and end up in dire situations. Here are examples of the mistakes many small business owners make and how you can avoid them.

1. Spending money on expensive non-essential assets before there is sufficient cash inflow. While expensive office furniture will impress your customers and make you feel good you may end up in situations where that nice furniture will be the only thing left in your business.                                                    

SOLUTION: Be Spartan as much as possible till you have extra money to spend on non-essential items.   

2. Renting an office space earlier than needed. Do you really need a full-time office in this day and age of telecommuting?                                                                                                              

SOLUTION: Work out of home office and utilize virtual communication technology. If you do need physical space look into sharing it with other business to divide the cost.

3. Hiring full-time employees in a hurry. Full-time employees can cost you lot more than you realize.

SOLUTION: Look into hiring temporary workers on an as-needed basis. Also, see if you can outsource the tasks on the cheap rather than doing them in-house.

4. Not negotiating with vendors. It’s amazing how much money small business owners leave on the table by failing to even ask for discount let alone using the advanced negotiation tactics with their vendors. In these difficult economic times, vendors will go out of their way to keep your business.

SOLUTION: Seek quotes from at least 2-3 vendors, play them against each other or simply ask existing vendor for discount! Remember, everything is negotiable in business.

5. Spending too much on marketing without clear understanding of the return. Why should you keep advertising on the radio when most of the people are not even listening to them anymore?

SOLUTION: Explore low-cost marketing techniques. Also, explore how you can utilize online and social media marketing more effectively. Ask marketer, and yourself, to justify the return on marketing investment.

6. Trying to do everything yourself. On surface this may seem counter-intuitive. After all, doing work yourself will save you money, right? But think about it – the time and effort you spend on the non-essential tasks could be utilized on more productive and higher-return activities if you let others take care of those tasks.

SOLUTION: Find out if the task can be handled by someone else more effectively. Delegate, delegate, delegate.

7. Having large fixed cost and not being flexible. You will be hurt badly with fixed cost when sales go south while expenses remain the same.

SOLUTION: Convert fixed cost to variable as much as possible.

 

What other common mistakes small business owners make that hurt their cash flow? How would you handle them?