I have little to add to this great, no-nonsense column in the Wall Street Journal: “When Business Owners Are Control Freaks.” As a business coach, I have observed this countless of times, across all industries. Entrepreneurs, regardless of how extensive their leadership experience was before starting their business, almost always become control freaks. I believe this is mostly driven by the concern we owners have for quality control: if someone else does the job, he won’t do it as well as I would, and the customer will not be happy. It's one of the reasons that I have a business coach of my own, even though I am a business coach.
Enjoy the article, and consider taking the action that Robert Smith, owner of Champion Media Worldwide, took (you have to read the article to find out). It netted him $100,000 plus his first vacation in ten years.
Grow Strong!
Coach Grev
I find that when they finally do outsource, typically for something like IT, web site or bookkeeping, they don't get what they need and tighten things even more! Setting and managing expectations with employees, vendors a customers is such and important part of the process. Also, being more knowledgable on business topics - planning, accounting, marketing, IT - can help a lot in helping to manage.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree with you more, classmate, and I appreciate you bringing this up. I just realized with your comment that much of my writing has been encouraging outsourcing, but I barely hit on the problems with it or what to watch out for. I submitted a new update to the WBJ yesterday (6/13/12) where I hit on one of the problems associated with outsourcing R&D.
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