Beware the inconsequential
It’s interesting how some of the biggest changes come out of the most boring things. And how the seemingly inconsequential decisions often have the most impact.
My daughter rang the other day, beside herself with glee. On checking her bank account (the sort of thing often done from behind the sofa, the way I used to watch scary TV when I was young) she discovered that a genuinely enormous refund had been made from a utility provider. Month by month she had been overpaying and they had finally spotted it. And refunded it. Now quite apart from the sheer astonishment that they had (a)noticed it and (b) sent it back, the shock was that it was SO MUCH. That’s what happens when small things are allowed to mount up. They become very large things.
One of my clients learned this the hard way recently. The office manager at the company had been tasked with checking that all clients paid before each session. Monthly receipts looked about right, up on this time last year, and all the signs pointed at being under control. But a curiosity-driven little drill-down by me – I can’t recommend this enough: get the bloody drains up every now and again with no warning –showed that while she was checking, that was all she was doing. When she found someone hadn’t paid but had been treated, she didn’t go back to them. Well, few people in this world actually enjoy chasing people for money. The result: the business was taking, on average, about 18%less each month than it should have been.
The shortfall was hard to rectify. While it’s not so hard to go back and ask for £100, it’s stickier when it’s five grand and they’ve already got what they came for. Those pesky £100 fees just kept adding up. All because the office manager had been told to ‘check’, not to do anything about it. Although, admittedly, you’d think that was explicit.
Which brings me to a dichotomy. I like working with grown-ups in a grown-up fashion. That means you make sure people know what to do, what they need to deliver for your business, that they have the resources and skill to do it and then you let them get on with it. They might do it differently to you but so long as it works, that’s fine. People have to bring themselves to work if they’re going to stand a chance of getting anything out of the effort. Stifle individuality at your peril. I don like clock watching or rigid ‘this is how we do it here’.
That said, before anyone can get the freedom to amend their style to suit them, they have to get the outcome reliable 99% of the time. That’s how to avoid the cautionary tale of the timid office manager. Left to her own devices, without guidance, she messed up. Only after proving that she could chase up those payments and settle those outstanding debts should she have been given free rein.
You don’t need forests worth of manuals. Another of my clients recently hired a general manager who systematically documented every single thing in the business. Job descriptions ran to eight pages. And nothing that needed to be happening was happening.
For each function, just know what needs to be done every single day, week and month and then check on it until they think you are even when you aren’t. Then jump on it now and again. Praise them for getting it right. Hammer them for getting it wrong. There have to be consequences, both positive and negative.
And remember one last thing on this subject, readers: It’s never going to be perfect. Not ever. So you can get over that now, all you autocratic, perfectionist, control-freak entrepreneurs. You know who you are.
