Know Your Role as Business Owner
Do you know what is Bandwidth in Entrepreneurship.
In computer language, we know Bandwidth is referred to as the space available to perform the activity. When we say, we do not have enough Bandwidth, it means the space is not enough in the computer to perform the activity.
Similarly, every Businessman has limited time to perform in a day. We can refer to it as having a limited Bandwidth in a day. There are various activities which a Businessman performs in a day. If he does not have time to perform the activities, it is said he has Bandwidth problem. He is not able to perform his duties in the available time.
Hence it is very important for every businessman to have bandwidth to perform the important task. There are various task of Business Owner, which he/she could delegate and various task which he cannot delegate. For eg. Planning for Finance, Strategy for Business Development and Reviewing the Business Parameters are the areas which need personal focus and involvement of Business Owner, which he should not delegate. There are various other function like preparing the Invoice, attending the clients, communicating on telephone queries & stock verification, which Business Owner can delegate to their Employees. There are various other areas like HR, Accounting and Logistic, which can be outsourced if Business Owner do not have full-fledged team handling those area. It is very important that Business Owner should have the Bandwidth available every time for addressing the emergency situation.
It is very important to understand that there are 2 Roles basically followed by every Businessman. “In The Business” Role and “On The Business” Role. This means, there are activities in which Businessman needs to supervise is ‘On The Business” Role and the activities which Businessman cannot delegate are “In The Business” Role. Major Role of the Businessman is to supervise his business and remaining time he has to be available for any emergency raised in the business. It should never happen that Businessman is busy in daily activities and could not address the emergency or important urgent issues, which cannot be solved without his involvement.
One of my client is into FMCG Distribution Business. When he came to me, he was frustrated as his business was getting stagnated and he was so occupied in the daily activities, that he was totally
burnt-out. He was really concerned about his future as he had not taken a single day off from his Business for last five years and was worried that he has lost his social connects. His daughters are approaching marriage age and if this way he continued in his business, he will not be able to get time for his family and achieve the other non-business life goals.
It was the clear example of Businessman doing Job in his own Business. And that is the most expensive job. It was the clear case of mismanagement and not delegating the work effectively. There was no standard processes and system followed. Everything revolved around the Business owner. Everyone was dependent on him for everything. It was like he was involved in everything and no one was empowered to take any work related decision. This was making him occupied whole day. His phone continuously kept ringing and it was really getting difficult for me to communicate with him. He had a staff of 4 people working for him, still he did not have bandwidth for various important activities which he should be doing to make his business grow. I am sure many of you will also be facing this issue.
On doing the various analysis of his business, we first of outlined the various activities which he does in a day. We found his major time was spent in attending the dealers’ inquiry and orders on phone calls. Secondly the logistic arrangement was taking his remaining time. We got the various sales operations system and processes in place and in the period of one year he became the happiest person who enjoyed his work very much and was showing the growth in the Business. Now he was keeping the supervision of his business by playing the role of “On the Business” and concentrating majorly on meeting his Dealers and Vendors regularly and doing Review and Planning of his Business regularly which are “In The Business” Role for Business Owner.