Are you leading your business or playing whac-a-mole?

That’s a provocative question, isn’t it?  How do you know if you’re playing whac-a-mole instead of leading?

The author getting ready to play Whac-a-Mole

• It often takes you days-to-weeks to get back to people who aren’t a top priority,
• You get little sleep; not because you’re tossing and turning, but because you’re just working late all the time, 
• You’re out of shape / not exercising enough, 
• You feel like you don’t get anything important done most days, 
•  It seems that you spend a great deal of your time “putting out fires,”
• You’re losing customers or you’re not closing deals that you should be,
• You find yourself wishing that your employees would take more initiative
• The idea of taking a week-long, 100% work-free vacation is tough for you to imagine

Although this list of issues may seem common among you and your peers, they are symptoms of a lack of leadership; you’re playing whac-a-mole with your business.  You do not have the time necessary to effectively lead, develop a strategy, market, do high-end business development, manage important customer relationships, and manage your personal life the way it needs to be.

Take my anonymous poll about whac-a-mole leadership, and see what others are saying!

So what causes whac-a-mole management?

1. Inadequate delegation: you are handling too many problems and issues yourself.  As a result, not only are you doing too much work, you are not developing leaders in your business. 
2. Inadequate leadership and initiative in the organization.  This is caused by several things.  First and foremost, you aren’t delegating enough and developing your people.  Secondly, you may have hired or promoted the wrong people to lead. 
3. Zero-defect mentality.  If no one’s allowed to make mistakes, and if you have to personally get involved in everything your business or organization does, there’s no way you’ll have time to do the things you must do as a leader.  Inspectors and supervisors don’t get paid as much as CEOs for a reason, so stop doing their job and start doing yours.
4. Perfectionism.  If you are a perfectionist (and many small business owners are), you have a poor grasp of what is good enough.  Yes, it would be wonderful if you could be perfect, but even Lexus cars with their “relentless pursuit of perfection” come with a warranty.  You must decide what is “good enough” so that you can get work done.  Not only is this keeping you from sleeping and taking enough time off, it’s also driving your employees crazy.  Your best employees will leave you.

So how do you stop being like most small business CEOs (whac-a-mole players) and start being a strategic CEO? 

1.  You have to change your mindset.  Weigh the cost to yourself and to your company for not thinking strategically.  You may think you are strategic, but if any of this post resonated with you you’re not.  Also, what’s the cost for not marketing enough, for not managing your best customers well enough, etc.  Maybe no one can do it as well as you, but is “as well as you” really the requirement?
2. Document.  You need to document your processes and procedures, you need to train your people on them, and then you need hold them accountable for following them.  Also, if your first response to this was “How am I going to find the time to do that?” you are still thinking the wrong way.  Hint: be a leader. 
3. Set metrics.  Determine simple ways to measure productivity, performance, efficiency, etc., in your company and then manage those metrics.  No, that’s not all you need to do to lead effectively, but metrics help you hold others accountable.
4. Delegate.  Once you delegate work, LEAD.  Don’t ever do the work that you delegated (except in a real emergency), and don’t answer questions for people that they are able to answer themselves if they show a little initiative.  If you do the work for them, or you answer questions that your team can easily answer themselves, you are killing initiative. 
5. Hold your team accountable.  This means you might need to fire some people, suspend some, etc. 
6. Hire real leaders for your teams or promote the person who appears to be the best leader (people look up to her) and then give her training.  Leadership is far too important to allow this to be ad hoc.   Give all your managers training.

What happens when you stop playing whac-a-mole?  You spend your time leading, creating strategies, marketing, training your people, enjoying your family, etc.  That translates into greater profitability, sales, company value, and quality free time.

What are your thoughts?  How about sharing them as a comment below!