I was at a local business the other day and had a bad experience. I've always had good service at this business on previous occasions, but this time, I was very disappointed with my service. One of the reasons why this experience was bad is because the owner was not there on this particular day.
This is an endemic problem with many small businesses. The business has a good model for success, as long as the ownership team is present, but once unsupervised, things fall apart. It gets to the point that where the ownership team feels they need to be there during every hour of operation.
The stories of small business owners working 80 – 100 hours per week are true, no doubt, because sometimes that’s what it takes to get the job done. I have to admit that not only did I do that, but I was guilty of wearing that as a badge of pride in my early days as a small business owner.
Yet working that many hours is often a sign of poor operations management and could be a tell tale sign that a business is not investing enough time in training their employees. Small business owners who have employees and still work that many hours should question whether they could delegate more of their duties.
It wasn’t long after working the countless hours in my stores that I learned that nothing I did was really that specialized of a skill. I was always the guy who made the bagel dough and baked the bagels in the first few years of operation. On the days I did turn it over to my partner or an employee, I would have this foolish pride in the fact that a few regular customers would notice that someone besides me made the product, because it wasn’t as good as when I made it.
It didn’t take long for me to have the epiphany that if I wanted my business to improve, as well as my quality of life, I could not make myself so mission critical to success. Rather, I should invest the time in training my employees to be as good, if not better, than me in helping out with operations.
I referenced the fact that I worked for a major fast food establishment in a previous post. One of the things that I remember from my experience there is that I had to watch 30 minute training videos before working in any of the stations. Whether it was working the grill, the fryer, the cash register or on janitorial duty, there was a video of how to properly work that station. I still remember how all the employees hated janitorial duty (it was called “lot and lobby”) where we had to change ashtrays, take out the garbage, sweep/mop and clean the bathrooms. Still, we watched a video on how to properly perform all those tasks to this company’s standards.
The realization that these videos were pure genius struck me years later when I told one of my employees at my bagel store to mop the front area floor. I went to do something in the back and returned to the horror of a floor that looked much worse after the mopping than before. You see, I forgot to tell this employee that before you mop a floor, you have to sweep up all the loose dirt. While that may seem like common sense to some, those of us who have had employees learn quickly that for there to be common sense, there needs to be common experiences and training. This particular employee never had to mop a floor before and this was his first experience. I may have made the same mistake the first time I mopped a floor had I not watched that training video at my first job.
Of course, you may have in mind delegating significantly more responsibility to your employees than just a mopping a floor. That is fine as long as you are committed to training your employees to accept those responsibilities.
When approaching training, keep in mind the old maxim to “hire for attitude, train for skill.” Especially when delegating management responsibilities. You can train your employees to develop certain skills, but you can’t change their temperament.
Developing a training program is not easy and it will take an investment of time. Just remember that every minute invested in an effective training program will return countless minutes of your own future productivity.
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