As an entrepreneur, I’m sure you wouldn’t want your business to just remain stagnant. You definitely want your business to continue growing or at least sustain in the long run. Besides considering other strategies like strengthening our marketing and conducting periodical process improvements, there is another angle that you may want to consider looking at which is training and development. In fact, I personally think that it should be amongst the first things you need to really consider as an entrepreneur. If you want to grow your business, like it or not, you have to train your people. Period.
No, I’m not just saying that because I run a training business and I want you to engage me. All I’m saying is that even when I run a training business, I am still not immune to the fact that we as an organisation, still need to continuously train others so that our business can grow. Indulge me for a few minutes and I shall explain myself in this article.
You are irreplaceable, that’s a fact
Have you ever had difficulties taking a leave of absence because if you are not there, nothing progresses at work? Have you had to cancel your vacation or change your plans with the family because of an urgent matter that came up at the office?
Yes, believe it or not, no one can do what you do! And because of that, you will always be stuck doing what you do and that hinders progress. You see, the number one problem most entrepreneurs have is finding a person they can delegate the right task to. And to a certain extent, that is true. Why not hire a person who has the right character and attitude, regardless of their background and train them to do some of the tasks that you can afford to hand over. Sure, they won’t know how to do it well, but that’s where you need to train them.
I know, that’s easier said than done. Lucky for you, I’m a trainer – an I shall share with you what or how it can be done.
First and foremost, do a job analysis on your current role. Identify what are the task that you are doing – list them out, it doesn’t have to be in any particular order, just whatever comes across your mind. Then, put it aside and do something else. Come back to it a couple of hours later and see if you missed out any other task. Do this for a couple of rounds until you are satisfied with the list. You may also put in task that “you wish you could do if you just had the time” – these are also crucial if your intention is to grow.
Next, with that same list of tasks, list out for each task, what level of performance would be satisfactory to you. For example, issue quotations – what would be an expected level of performance for this? No mistakes? Out within an hour? Must ensure the profit margin is at a specific percentage? Able to acquire the right information on pricing? List it all out. From there, you now have your task-performance indicators. If you want to make it sound corporate, go ahead and call these Key Results Areas (KRAs) or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) if you wish – it’s your business, and no one will argue with what you call it as long as you know the purpose of this list.
Now once you have this list (KRA, KPI if you wish), all you have to do is to communicate this with the employee or the person you hired to assist you. Sure, they won’t get it straight away, that is why you need to train them – and when I say train, it doesn’t mean hire a trainer or an external party to do this for you. You know what the job consists of and how the task should be done, so all you need to do is…
Tell, show, and involve
Have you ever come across this saying; Tell me, and I’ll forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I’ll understand. Well, my friend, in essence, that is training. It is not only having a KPI and expecting people can automatically achieve it. You need to tell them what performance level is expected and show them how it is to be produced. And since you know how to do it, it should be too difficult for you, and be involved in the task when they actually do it (without you yourself rolling up your sleeves to get it done) so you can guide and advise them – be a safety net if you may so they can learn it in a safe and controlled environment. Please don’t straight away throw them into the deep end of the pool and expect them to swim gracefully! Shadow them, follow them, observe them, and take notes. Most importantly is to catch them doing the right things, not just catching their mistakes! People automatically will know if they did something wrong, it’s when they are doing it right is when they don’t realise it. So if you highlight what they are doing well and in line with the expected performance outcome, they will be more alert to it and most likely repeat it consciously.
But I don’t have the time
My friend, remember what I said earlier? You are irreplaceable? Do you realise that by being irreplaceable, you will never have enough time to do anything else? This is because only you can do the work, hence everything revolves around you. So, if you fail to see the need to do this before things get out of hand and become more demanding, you will never get to break away from this chain you created for yourself.
I know this first hand because I’m a trainer and in the training business, like it or not, the client hires the trainer, not the company or the training programme. What that basically means is, that the client hires you and when they want that specific trainer, they won’t settle for anyone else. So, if a client hires me to run a 2-day in-house training programme, that means I won’t be able to do any other work for that 2 days including follow-up on calls, issuing the invoice for that programme itself, meeting new prospects, and sending our new proposals. Things become worst when I run my 5-day Train-The-Trainer Certification Course because that’s the whole week gone!
Lucky for me I realised this early, even when I was just a full-time freelance trainer with my own sole proprietor set-up. I appointed a partner and together, we would work on the back-end tasks until she was able to do them independently. Then, we hired extra help and she became their trainer. Now, as we have our private limited company, the second generation of staff are training the third generation of staff. Even I now have a very solid second Lead Trainer for my Train-The-Trainer Certification Course and he and his small team runs the programme independently in Sarawak and Sabah.
But what if I train my successor and they leave to become my competitor?
Henry Ford once said, “The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.”
Sure, there will always be a risk involved when you train your successor, especially if you train them well enough. However, if you treat them good, if not better as they perform to your level of expectations, it would be very unlikely for them to leave you. As Richard Branson is commonly quoted as saying, “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.” Treat them not only as a person that works for you but tries to engage them as a partner to deliver the best service or product to your client – both of you are on the same side. Remember?
But even if they leave, have a big enough heart to say that you had a hand in helping them grow. Think of it as another opportunity to train someone else but now you know where you did wrong so you can correct them and possibly do better this time around. If you can train one, you surely can train more!
What I’m trying to say here is, that you have to train your replacement in order for you yourself to have a chance to progress and grow. Don’t be stingy and a control freak. Learn to identify the task that can be delegated or even a task that someone else could be better at it than you. Do it before you are too busy, and it becomes too late. As the saying goes, the best time to plant a durian tree was 10 years ago. The second-best time is today.
Try it and have fun training your successor.
