Your efforts wills be worth it!
Managing a business can be challenging. Managing your business may make demands on you that exceed anything that you anticipated when you got into this business.
But good business management makes good economic sense. And this is particularly so as your business grows.
The common growth curve of business
In the beginning it might just be you. No other workers are involved. During that period all of the productive output comes from you. So, of course, you have to be focused on maximizing your personal output.
Then you add an employee — a helper. The helper allows you to be more productive, but the productive output of the business is still almost totally yours. So your focus remains on maximizing your personal output.
Then you add another helper or two, and most of the productive output of the business is still yours, but things are starting to change.
Eventually, as you add workers, you cross a threshold after which the productive output of all the other workers exceeds your own productive output. At this point, the economics of your role and responsibility in the business change.
Optimize the value of your efforts
Now it makes no sense to focus your attention exclusively on your own personal output. These other workers now allow you to exercise leverage — to multiply the value of your own efforts through them. More precisely, your attention now needs to include maximizing the productive output of everyone else — who, as a group, produce far more than you do.
For example, if you can devote 20% of your time to helping each of your other 10 employees produce 10% more output, the net result is probably fabulous for your business. Yes, these are fictional and arbitrary numbers, but the concept is sound and it applies to nearly every enterprise.
Yet, many business owners still resist transitioning into managers as their businesses grow. For some, it’s because of a delusional belief that the work of the business is obvious, and it shouldn’t require additional management direction.
Of course, this is wrong.