04072021 India, CoachKrishnadas:
Continued from Coach KRISHNADAS 01…….
- When have you last tried to upgrade yourself?
- Do you think your employees are unable to understand you?
- How do you differentiate between an asset and a liability in SWOT?
- Is your company depends on your strengths or on the team’s cumulative strengths?
- How do you express your feelings when your team member lets you down?
Happy Sunday Friends! In our continuous endeavor to offer you the best we kept this treasure for a happy Sunday reading…..enjoy and implement!
Coach KRISHNADAS continues, “The 25-year-old was extremely intelligent and a technology wunderkind. But he and his company were struggling.
He was facing difficulty retaining employees, which was resulting in a slow-down of production and expansion plans, which in turn was stagnating the growth of the company. He was worried that pretty soon he would lose the first-mover advantage in the competitive environment he was in.
What was he doing wrong?
Through discussions with his team and analysis of their work, what we found out is that while he was extremely good on the technical side of the business, the young entrepreneur was struggling with the soft skills required to build an organization.
His ability to develop a team, delegate responsibilities, monitor employees, were all non-existent. He would leave a single page of hand-drawn design with some footnotes at the desk of the head designer and expect him to get work done by the end of the day.
If someone came to him to seek clarifications, he would get frustrated that his team was not ‘getting his vision’ or berate them for not being able to ‘understand such basic concepts’. Time and again, he would give a task to an employee and then not check on it till the deadline was reached.
All the while, our young friend would lock himself up in his cabin and furiously code away to, what he hoped was glory. He worked 16-18 hours a day, took no holidays and slowly pulled away from all social groups.
He was reaching his limits mentally and physically. Frustrated, he said, “I am working so hard in my company. I don’t know why it is still not working out.”
And there, we had our answer – He was working in his company. Instead, he should be working on it.
When you are working in your business, you tend to focus on the micros.
You are doing most of the work because you feel that you are the best suited to do it and you have a certain vision of how everything needs to be done.
However, the challenge with this approach is that your business will only grow proportionate to your own highest competence. Your limit is your company’s limit.
Whereas, when you are working on your business:
You put your energies into getting things done through others.
You hire people, who are ideally better or have complementary skills compared to you.
You repeatedly clarify your vision and plan to your employees.
You help them make a plan and monitor it closely and if something goes wrong, you help them get back on track.
You become the support system on which your team can rely on.
Not all of them may be as intelligent or efficient as you. Some may need more guidance and push than others. But you swallow that short-term pain, because in the long run, your organization’s growth opportunity compounds. Because it is not restricted by the capabilities of a single individual , but the best of the team’s collective competence.
It took some time for our young entrepreneur friend to put this concept into action. He joined a learning group of experienced business professionals and leaders and spent a year learning concepts of leadership, management, team development and business operation.
Slowly, but surely, he started attracting good employees, attrition dropped, productivity increased and his business started to grow.
In fact, one of his team members once came to him with an idea of a technology product they could design for the pharma company. He encouraged the team member to work on the project on the side.
In 2020, when the COVID pandemic came about, and all non-essential businesses got hit, his company could quickly pivot to provide services to the pharma sector because of the work that had already been started by this employee”. ………….(To be continued)
About the author –
KRISHNADAS is an entrepreneur, trainer and executive mentor who runs multiple businesses. His company P5 CONSULTING provides bespoke HR, training and psychometric assessment services to companies and individuals. He also runs LLC – Lifelong Learners Community (www.p5consulting.com/llc) having members who are business owners and organizational leaders from different industries. LLC has regular training sessions and provides its members coaching by certified experts to help them grow themselves and their businesses. You can reach him at kd@p5consulting.in
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