Small Business Owners “In the Trenches”
April 16, 2009 by Jean Murray
Filed under Business
Should a small business owner get out and work “in the trenches” among the employees? In an emergency? Every day?
My husband works for a small engineering company with 30 employees. The owner works on projects, pitches in when a deadline must be met or when someone is ill, and he’s been known to clean up the office after a meeting.
This sounds like a great thing – a small business owner working along with the employees. But is it? I don’t think so.
“A business owner’s job is strategic, not tactical.” This from Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth Revisited, my top-recommended book for new business owners. Being strategic means looking at the big picture, the business as a whole. When Gerber says you should be working ON your business not IN your business, this is what he means. Like the general in a battle, the ultimate goal is to win the battle, not to fight with the soldiers. If your are dealing with tactical (short-term, small-picture issues) instead of the big picture strategic issues, you can’t grow your business.
Who is doing your job, if you’re working with your employees? Your job of of running the business doesn’t include shipping or cleaning bathrooms. If you don’t have a job description, you need to get one. Everyone in your company needs one, even if there are only two or three of you.
Who is doing their jobs? If you have to help employees get their jobs done, that tells me one of two things is wrong: (1) you don’t have the right people working in these jobs, or (2) you don’t have enough people working in these jobs. It’s your job (strategy again) to figure out if someone isn’t doing the job and then deal with that person. If everyone is doing his/her job, maybe you need to hire more people.
How often is too much? I’m not saying that you shouldn’t pitch in and help in an emergency – let’s say a big order needs to be shipped and your head shipping person had a death in the family. But emergencies by definition don’t happen every day, and not even every month.
Even in the smallest of small businesses, if you have more than 2-3 employees, each person should have a job to do and do it. Sure, they can be generalists, but their primary jobs (and yours) should be well-defined. As Gerber says, “if the business depends on you, you don’t own it, you have a job.”
Think strategic. Think big picture. And leave the trenches to others.
Image source: Newscom
I find this advise to be unrealistic. As a small business owner of a new business you have to be willing to work in the trenches. If you are not you will go out of business. Everyone I know who did not “work” their business is out of business. A small business can only afford to hire a few people and you can only expect them to do thier jobs and go home. I am the one that has a vested interest in my company, so I am the one who has to pull the heavist load. Later, when the company is established this advise would be great, but not for a new company. Thank from the trenchs. Angie Lilley
Thanks for the great comment. I agree that a new business owner has to start out doing everything. You can’t afford to hire people but soon you will have to, if you want to grow. As your business grows you will get more and more strategic and spend less time in the trenches. If you don’t, your business won’t be able to grow.