I don\u2019t know about you, but I\u2019m a fan of video games, and never cease to be amazed at the incredible landscapes and worlds, puzzles, and physical feats that game designers build to tell their stories and to challenge a player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A game protagonist can be painted into a corner and have to fight their way out, they can be on an endlessly winding path to the summit of a mountain, fulfilling a quest step by step, building strength, learning and developing skills until they reach the top! What a thrill!!! But at other times, after all that effort they only find a plateau\u2026 where regardless of tactics, their character is tested and tried and yet not able to proceed to the next goal without rethinking their approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s not that different in business, and if you\u2019re on an upward trajectory, the ever increasing challenges will, like in the game, steer you towards growth, and improvement, and yet will inevitably meet plateaus where a rethinking of your approach will be needed. One of the things that can lead to such a plateau is that there is a bottleneck restricting the growth\u2026 and maybe\u2026 just maybe, that bottleneck is you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you take a situation like this to your business coach, here are 5 questions they might ask to explore where you might be the one who is blocking the flow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the great benefits of growth is hiring and bringing in people whose expertise, skills, and knowledge complement and expand your capabilities. However if a team has to wait for you to approve features, tweaks, or experiments then they\u2019re hamstrung and are not empowered to own their own decisions, and yes, even their mistakes. This leaves a huge missed opportunity for their (and your) capacity to expand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To get past this, your mindset has to change, not to one focused on making the decisions, but instead to ensure that you\u2019ve given your team both enough clarity around the vision, goals and direction of your product (or service), and have empowered them to operate within that vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Set clear priorities and let your team leaders run with it. Trust them. Your job isn\u2019t to make every call\u2014it\u2019s to build a system that can scale without you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still neck deep in Jira tickets? Reviewing every PR? Troubleshooting bugs? Attending every meeting?
It\u2019s tempting\u2014especially if you\u2019re technical\u2014but it\u2019s a trap. You\u2019re not the team lead anymore. You\u2019re the founder! If you\u2019re struggling to keep your fingers in every pie you\u2019re going to spread yourself too thin, and you\u2019re really going to irritate your team!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Micromanagement can become a big problem in small business because it leaves a team feeling under appreciated for their capability and their input, and it leaves you harried and frazzled trying to stay on top of all the things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Promote someone you trust. Let them take the wheel so you can focus on the big picture: hiring, growth, strategy, and vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This one feels flattering\u2026 until it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If all the critical information lives in you, or you\u2019ve built a place where even the clients are reliant on you specifically then you\u2019re not only constraining your team from shining, you\u2019re creating a critical dependency that, should the unthinkable happen could also mean significantly greater challenges for your business, should you for any reason become unavailable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no doubt, it feels great to be needed, but it also feels great to grow into sharing that feeling with others. There\u2019s also significant gratification to be had in expanding from being the technician, to facilitating others to help this business you\u2019ve built, grow. If you\u2019re freed up from having to be available on the ground, you\u2019ve got much more scope to clear the way for more productivity and you\u2019ll unblock the bottleneck allowing much more work to flow through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Invest trust in your team. Bring them into key meetings. Hand off ownership and show that it\u2019s not just a one-person show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is your focus on building or scaling? This one\u2019s a killer, and for some can actually mean totally rethinking what you\u2019re about. As someone who started out running a one person agency and delivering for my clients, I hit that plateau after a number of years and had to make a crucial decision; did I want to keep being a technician? Or did I want to grow what I was building?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I chose the former, and the end result was that I folded up the business over time, and found a role in a company that allowed me to keep growing while keeping my hands on the tools. But that isn\u2019t for everyone!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you want to grow this business, consider if it\u2019s time to trate in the technical hat, for the architect\u2019s one and staffing with great technicians. In this space the role now is hiring, culture, fundraising, and growth\u2014not pushing pixels or writing code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When you\u2019re neck deep in all the day to day activities in your business you default to having to react to situations, to solve problems as they happen, managing issues on the fly. Operating this way means you don\u2019t have the headspace to be proactive and prevent issues before they ever happen because you can\u2019t keep your head high enough to be able to look at and plan for the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reactive management is a really high pressure way to operate bringing with it a lot more stress. If you\u2019re able to plan ahead you can introduce proactive, preventative measures that will reduce not just stress on the system but also stress on you!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is a significant shift, so it takes some planning and strategy to implement such a change to your mindset, and by extension, the mindset of the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you\u2019re already thinking about implementing the strategies we\u2019ve talked about earlier in this article, you\u2019re part of the way there in creating that headspace to be able to become more proactive. At its core it’s about releasing your team to be able to execute the practice of the business while you drive its vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If things slow down when you step away from the work, that\u2019s a problem and while letting go isn\u2019t easy\u2014 it\u2019s necessary to create the space in your business for growth… If this hit close to home, try this:
Pick one thing to delegate this week. Just one. Then give your team the space to run with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They\u2019ll surprise you\u2014in the best possible way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Feel like your business is stuck? You might be the bottleneck\u2014here’s how to fix it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2257,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-employee-experience"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n