Working in or on?

Instead of working on their businesses, most owners are trapped working in their businesses, slaving away and grinding it out. Instead of working on tomorrow, they are preoccupied with working in today. They end up majoring in minor things. They worry about office supplies instead of office processes. They focus on accounting details instead of holding their employees accountable. They worry about the company's vision plan instead of planning the company's vision. They react with short-term, short-lived fixes instead of proactively creating long-term solutions. They fixate on their mail, email, or cell phone calls instead of communicating their expectations to their key managers or employees. They obsess with doing things right instead of doing the right things. They do the wrong type of work really well. They are chasing their tails!

Are you trapped in the body and mind of a doer instead of a leader? Be honest, do you fall into the routine of doing the work of an employee or technician instead of the work of an owner or leader? Do you neglect such areas as vision creation, strategic planning, establishing priorities and goals, organizational design, business system development, profit improvement, team development, employee accountability, etc?

Odds are, you were probably a successful technician that caught the entrepreneurial bug several years ago and bought, inherited or started a business related to your technical skills. You are too comfortable with and good at handling such details. Such expertise, unfortunately, has a strong tendency to suck you into the nooks and crannies of the business. For you, the technical day-to-day guts of the business are addictive and tough to escape. Sadly, a technician’s mindset and mode of operation are insufficient for running a business. These technical assets can be real liabilities and traps for an owner trying to be more proactive and strategic.

For example, maybe you were a gifted house painter that thought, “I can start a painting business on my own”. From the get go, you probably functioned in a technical capacity and never grew your leadership capacity or the business systems. You worried about selling and performing painting jobs. You probably didn’t worry about how to design and build a painting business with you as CEO. Rather, you dove in, got busy being busy, and started functioning as a painter, chief salesperson, estimator, bookkeeper, materials supplier, quality control supervisor, etc.

Consequently, you function as a jack-of-all-trades painter that also happens to own a house painting company. You are more technician than leader. Instead of focusing on the business of painting, you focus on the technical work of painting. You probably spend far too much time painting or micromanaging your other painters and not enough time painting your company’s future. Because of your technical comfort zone, you are trapped doing the work of a painter, not the strategic work of a leader.

Here are a few more examples to drive home the point. Being a good computer programmer and running a successful programming business are two different roles and worlds. Writing code is technical and tactical work. Just because you know how to do the daily technical work of programming, for example, doesn’t mean you know how to design, build and manage a business that does the work of programming. Programming code has not prepared you for the key functions of a business -- selling, marketing, client service, finance, leadership, business systems, people management, etc. Technical experience is insufficient background for running a business.

Similarly, if your background is selling, finance or production, your bias will get you buried in the selling, financial and production details of the business. You must escape your technical conditioning! Hire others to handle such matters, if necessary.

Business ownership is all about strategic leadership, not technical doer-ship. Few owners understand and appreciate such critical distinctions. Tragically, owners mistake a technician’s orientation for that of an entrepreneur’s. They mistake busy-being-busy activity for accomplishment. They confuse hard work for intelligent work. They have a technician’s addiction to detail work. Sadly, they work and think like employees instead of owners. They do the wrong type of work. They fail to grasp that running a business is strategic, entrepreneurial, visionary, and requires strong leadership.