Focus on your job - Let the experts do theirs

If you have cavities, do you fill your own teeth? Or do you let the dentist fill them?

Seems like a dumb question, doesn’t it. Of course you don’t fill you own teeth.

Here’s another one. Do you do your own bookkeeping? Or do you employ a bookkeeper or accountant to do it for you?

Not quite as dumb this time. But I know of small a business owner that keeps his own books. It seems to me he could better spend their time promoting or managing his business. (And he does a poor job of bookkeeping.)

Another question. Do you develop your own software, or buy already developed packages?

More broadly speaking, are you one of those people who thinks you will save money by doing it yourself, rather than turning to an expert, or buying the product off the shelf?

A long time ago I owned a machine shop. My employees, highly skilled production machinists, wanted to build our own equipment. “Save cost”, they said. “Faster”, they said.

So they built some special machines for us. I let them.

Slowly, over a period of years, and after they had built several machines, I learned that in most cases their work gave us machines that didn’t work as well as those available on the market, cost us much more money in the long term, (both in actual cost and in poor performance) and took longer to get up and running than if we had purchased them.

The reason? We were production machinists, producing a variety of parts for a variety of customers. We were not one-of-a-kind custom machine designers and fabricators. We were experts in what we do, but not in what they do.

The lesson -- hire the experts or buy their machines.

One friend wants to establish a Web site. To do so he’s teaching himself html, the language of Web site formatting. It will take him hours to learn it, more hours to design and lay out the site, more still to encode it, and even more to upload, edit and revise the material. All this to save $600 -- the cost of having an expert do it. So he saves $600, while taking 20 or more hours away from what he does well: being the rainmaker for his firm. How much new business could he have generated for the firm if he paid the $600 for the Web site, and used the 20 hours he saved for networking, marketing and selling?

Here’s another, even worse, example.

A client has spent two years developing a software package for operating her retail stores. Perhaps she saved some cash by developing it rather than buying an off-the-shelf package.

The question is, though, how much did she lose by having only a mediocre program? How much has revenue suffered because the inventory is poorly managed? How much extra interest has she paid as a result of being forced to finance the excess inventory? How much of her time has she spent guiding the software project instead of doing what she does best -- buying and selling apparel?

Think about it.

What do you do best?

Probably it’s working as an expert in your business and your industry. Recognize that. Focus on it.

Stay away from the odd jobs. Let the experts do them.

Charles R. Schaul, Partner of SixPillars Research Group, focuses on increasing business profits by resolving the problem of customer attrition. Aligning companies with their customers; generating and implementing strategic initiatives; and promoting employees’ customer focus through commitment, responsibility and accountability combine to achieve the result.

Copyright 2008 by Charles R. Schaul Boulder, Colorado. All rights reserved.

Hiring-Micromanagement-Inward Focus Problems

Frequently I hear complaints about not having enough capital, and about finding, hiring and retaining good employees. In other words, there are not enough resources, either financial or human.

I believe that underlying these problems are two others, more subtle, pervasive and damaging. Usually they either cause or magnify the problem of insufficient resources. At the same time they aren't understood or acknowledged. These are:
• poor hiring practices coupled with micro management
• inward focus and lack of creativity.

Poor hiring seems pervasive in our business world. Poor advertising attracts the wrong applicants, we then hire the best of them without regard to their fit with the job, usually train them poorly and finally, micro manage. It's no wonder human resources are the greatest challenge. Look at all the places we can make mistakes!

Micro management means not "letting go" of responsibility and authority. It means telling people how to do their jobs rather than allowing them to make their own plan and do their work without interference. It means looking over workers shoulders, unnecessarily checking progress, criticizing or finding "better" ways rather than praising and allowing them to have their way of doing things. Micro management is the characteristic of an unenlightened manager who then tells me, in private, that good employees aren't available, they have no loyalty, they take no initiative and managers are rare. "If only I could get people to take responsibility and do a good job" is the lament. Of course. No self respecting, competent employee will work for a micro manager for the long term.

Because of micro management, businesses can grow only to the size that one person, the micro manager, can manage. That manager can't "do it all" to sustain growth, can't "let go" to let others enable growth, is frustrated, frequently ill and burns out prematurely. Unfortunately, I see it a lot.

A second problem I encounter with business owners and managers is the that of inward rather than outward focus. With only a few exceptions, opportunities to advance a business reside outside the business in the market place, and not inside the business in its systems for doing business. Of course, the system must support the activity of the business, but many owners and managers seem to want to perfect the system while ignoring the external opportunities.

For example, the owner of a small dental equipment manufacturing business talked with me about setting up his own machine shop rather than buying from outside vendors. Had he done so he would have reduced total cost two percent. On the other hand, he would have continued doing the same amount of business as before, have the added burden of first learning how to and then managing a machine shop, and would have used up financial resources for at least three years. This is inward focus.

I suggested he revise his strategy to look outside the business:
• first, make a strategic alliance with two machining companies (rather then the nine he was buying from,) giving them all his work in exchange for negotiated price that meet his targets, and
• second, use the financial resources not now needed for machinery and expand his marketing and sales effort into a new niche, adding more than 30% (projected) to his sales revenue.

He followed these suggestions, turning his focus from solving a problem inside his business to seizing an opportunity outside his business. The long term benefit of the latter will five times that of the former. And, now it will be much easier to attract resources, both human and financial to his outward looking company.

So if you have problems of hiring, training and retaining employees, or if you feel tired, frustrated, and burned out, or if your business is stagnant -- maybe you are a inwardly focused micro manager. Think about it.

Charles R. Schaul, Partner of SixPillars Research Group, focuses on increasing business profits by resolving the problem of customer attrition. Aligning companies with their customers; generating and implementing strategic initiatives; and promoting employees’ customer focus through commitment, responsibility and accountability combine to achieve the result.

Copyright 2008 by Charles R. Schaul, Boulder, Colorado. All rights reserved.