Are You Ready For A Team?
I can’t believe I’m writing this on the 28th February. We’re one-sixth of the way through the year already and I could swear it was only Christmas last week! 😮
In the spirit of helping you get focused and ready for action though, rather than the rest of the year slipping on by unnoticed, I wanted to talk to you this week about a banana skin that a few of my clients are currently trying to avoid. And see if my tips can help you start thinking about your own juicy growth ideas for the year and what you’ll need to get in place if you’re going to achieve them.
I’m talking to a few clients right now about how they’ll grow their team so that they have enough support to grow their business. (When I say ‘right now’ I don’t mean right this minute because that would be bonkers!)
And it’s one of those classic areas where they can almost always tell me what they DON’T want to do.
Most of the time I hear things like:
- “I don’t want to hire (more) people because it’s too much responsibility”
- “I don’t want to turn into a full-time manager and have to stop doing the delivery part of the business that I love”
- “I hate the idea of managing people – because in my last job the staff were all a pain in the a**e”
And of course the classics like:
- “Nobody else can do this as well as me so I’ll just keep doing it myself”
- “I haven’t got time to train anybody else, so I’ll just keep doing it”
Anything there sound familiar by any chance?
Of course, all of these ‘reasons’ (which we all know are actually excuses) do actually have merit. And I’m not here to say that you should just change your thinking immediately and we can all live happily ever after. Because although that would be lovely, it’s also completely unreasonable.
What I am here to ask you to do though, is think about the positives and the possibilities of expanding your team rather than any possible problems. And start making a plan. Because plans are your friend here!
Knowing what you DON’T want is easy. It’s amazing how much harder it can be to pinpoint what you actually DO want. That involves shaking off the fear, the stresses and the worries that so often hold us back.
The thing with fear is that whilst it’s there to keep you safe, by definition that means it’s holding you back and encouraging you NOT to make progress. And that’s not a good plan for business!
Most of my clients try to tell me that they know they’ll need to grow their team, but they don’t need to do that right now, so they don’t need to think about it yet because it’s not a priority is it?
The problem with that though, is that if you wait until it IS a priority you’ll be on the back foot. When you need to find help urgently, you’re much more likely to make hasty decisions that will bite you on the bum!
Whereas thinking about this early allows you to work through all the possibilities. You can find out all the pros and cons of hiring in house versus outsourcing or using associates. You can ask other people for advice or recommendations. You can start sounding out potential suppliers or partners, and maybe even recruiters.
You can get answers to all those questions that confuse you about this stuff – like HR requirements or the financial implications of each option.
This way, once the time IS right to expand your support team you’ll know exactly how you want to do that, and you’ll probably be able to organise it in half the time and with a fraction of the stress that’s involved in doing this on the hoof because you’re suddenly too busy and you’re starting to let customers down.
So, please have a look at this week’s tips video for more of the nitty gritty around this.
And if this is the kind of dilemma you’re struggling to work though on your own feel free to book in a call with me here so we can talk about how I can help you solve your immediate problems and build your own brilliant plan for growth.
