Have You Lost the “Fun” in Your Business?

By:  Jennifer Deroin

Remember when you started your business, and it was so much fun?  Stressful probably too, but was it the good kind of exhilarating and productive stress that pushes us to achieve?  When you started, you might have gathered other like-minded thinkers.  People that were excited about this new thing you were doing, or making.  They were drinking the passion Kool-Aid, and you were rocking n’rolling, making it up as you went along.  Adapting. Imagining. Creating.  Your “first-on” employees had the same mindset as you – whatever it takes.  It was a cultural happy fest and an adrenaline high.

Then you were successful and you grew.  And it wasn’t as much fun.  You had to run an organization, instead of just making and selling that thing.  And now everything that worked, suddenly doesn’t.  And you’re wondering, “Why don’t they just get it and figure it out like I did?  Why do I have to tell them what to do?”

I was visiting with an owner recently who said those exact words – “why do I have to tell them, why don’t they just get it?”    Bummer alert: they’re not going to.  Employee #40 is not going to have the same “whatever it takes” mentality as employee #1, and definitely not the same mentality as you.   They just won’t.  They’re an employee.  They’ll take sick time, even when there’s a deadline (and you know what? That’s ok).  They’ll do what is asked of them, but they won’t have the same drive as you.  So what do we do about this curious predicament?

The rules of the game have changed.  Before, we could state the desired outcome and the rest would follow; we’d figure it out together, manage through difficulties, the original team passion played out, and it worked.  To move ourselves to the next stage, we need to create more clarity and a better system for understanding, accountability, and results.  Good news alert:  the process can be fun, particularly if you view it as the next summit to conquer on the journey towards continued success.

Transitioning Towards Organizational Focus

Create Clarity

What does the job require of this person?  That’s different than, what is the person doing in this job?  Try to frame that from a “mission” point of view.  If this role is serving the mission, what are its primary responsibilities, what will success look like, and how will we measure and monitor that?

Side benefit:  This improves team communication.  When employees start tripping over toes and stumbling into each other’s areas, one response might be, “why are they doing my job?  They’re making me look bad, and now I’m mad at them.”

Accountability System

The system doesn’t need to be complex.  In fact, simple is better.  Develop a method for employees to report up, putting the onus on them for reporting results.  Train your managers to get clean with their feedback, stating observable facts versus biased opinions.  Performance results are factual, not based in opinion.   It’s imperative that it’s frequent.  Eschew the old-school annual review and instead develop the mentality of monthly or quarterly coaching meetings where you review performance metric progress and determine what’s working, and what’s not, and what to do about that for the future.  After all, what’s more important – looking behind us, or managing for the future?

Compensation

As you develop the job role, identify what the fair market rate for that role demands.  If you have a high achiever, you can determine if they should be compensated towards the top end of that tier to retain them.    The purpose of this step is to create transparency and fairness as you consider pay increases.  It’s possible in the early stages, this might have been more of a gut decision, and now’s the time to address this if so.

These three steps will help you take the organization from Founder centric, to Organization centric.  You’ll hopefully find the new passion is the developing of people, in addition to the development of things.  A system that provides clarity and consistent feedback allows the organization to once again be fueled by the power of your people.

These tips are part of the Seven Stages of Growth Model.  To learn more about how you can look around the next corner on your growth journey and see what’s ahead, I invite you to reach out to me.

Jennifer Deroin is a Certified Stages of Growth Expert and the COO of The Nichols Accounting Group.  

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