As a business owner, do you really OWN every area of your business?
I ask this question as when I ran this session in a recent Planning day the unanimous question was NO. Not only that but people were able to set plans to take more ownership to improve the performance of different parts of their business. I will share with you the process we went through on the day.
This is a typical business structure for a successful business working with a business coach –
Within this structure, in a small business, the owner has their week across the five areas of that business – Being an MD, Marketing, Sales, Operations and Finance.
If you look at each of these “department” and what is required to be done you get the following list of tasks and areas of responsibility that require action, review and improvement.
Being an MD – Key Focus areas – Business Owner work, Business Value (When did you last hold a Shareholders Meeting?), Governance & Compliance, Leadership, Strategy, Business Planning etc.
Marketing – Key Focus areas – Marketing plan – Digital, Direct, Face to Face
Lead generation and key communication with Sales to build product ladder with offers and pricing
Sales – Key Focus areas – Sales Steps, Scripts & Skills.
Customer Acquisition -Taking people through the sales funnel across the steps to achieve paying customers at the required rate.
Maximising Customer Value – Account management, No of Transactions & Average Transaction Value
Conversion rates
Operations – Key Focus areas – Operations plan – What products/ services? Scheduling, Default diary, Efficiency, Gross margin, Systems & manuals. Team build and delegation
Finance – Key Focus areas – Finance – Financial reports, Breakeven analysis (including drawings), Value own time, Quoting and pricing, Fixed cost review and overhead control, Gross profit and Net profit, Cash position, cash gap control
This is quite a lot to be owning and dealing with every day. Now consider, which of these do you do yourself and which do you delegate, either through employing a team or out-sourcing. For all these areas you have to add this list of tasks to be fulfilled between you as MD and the people carrying out the tasks – Leadership / Management, Review Execution, Delegation, Communication.
Does this look like a lot to be done? How are you feeling about how well you are fulfilling all these CRITICAL tasks?
Now I want to introduce the concept of true Ownership –
In everything you do you will face a situation, it could be a problem, it could be a requirement to do something , it could be an opportunity. At each of these you face a choice of going below the Point of Power or going above the Power. You go below by entering a state of Denial, Making Excuses or Blaming someone, something or the environment for where you are. You go above the Point of Power by taking Responsibility, being Accountable or taking Ownership of that situation.
Ownership has to be taken, it cannot be given.
If you take Ownership you accept that you “own” the situation and are responsible to achieve whatever is required to maximise the positive outcomes available or minimise the negative outcomes available to you.
So now, think of all the five business areas above, go through the list of tasks or processes and ask yourself – do I own each and every one of these? Then give yourself a score out of 10 for how good your level of ownership is in each “department”, whether you do the task yourself or act as an MD as above in that department.
As an improvement task think to yourself what needs to improve in the level of ownership in which department. The answers you give yourself should form part of your plan to improve your business results.
I would like to thank Marc Eccles for introducing me to this concept and I hope you found the exercise beneficial in helping you see where you need to focus to improve your Ownership in your business.
If you would like to talk to me about how I could help you do this please contact me at rogerpemberton@actioncoach.com or on 07511 969690.
Thanks for reading.
