Over on the Quick Books Community Briefing on Small Business Blog, Chloe DeVita has a post on one of my favorite small business subjects – Working IN your business versus ON your business. Chloe (Miss Enterprise – love that!) talks about the challenges of keeping your business running while being available to customers and employees and how to address those issues by being organized and practicing good time management skills. I have two other ideas I would like to add to the conversation.
The first is the idea of efficiency vs. effectiveness. I believe you want to be efficient with tasks and activities and effective with people. Being efficient is normally equated with not wasting time, getting as much done as quickly as possible. I think this gets us accountant types (or anyone that bills by the hour) into trouble when dealing with customers, and co-workers. We tend to rush or be curt in conversation because "time is money". By being effective when dealing with people, we create value greater than the hourly rate invested in the relationship.
The second idea is the use of systems. By systems, I mean a written set of procedures for managing a process. This could be how you handle a telephone inquiry about your service, how you handle past due accounts, or the process for bringing on a new employee. Having these systems to run your business helps you to be more efficient with tasks and processes and lets you spend more time being effective with people. Having systems lets you work ON your business by monitoring the feedback from the system and making improvements. These systems will also allow you to confidently delegate as you grow, because you will have the confidence that the systems will provide you the feedback to let you know the business is running the way you want it to.
I hope that as the new year approaches, we can all find ways to work ON our business rather than IN it.
