Working "On" Your Business, Not "In" Your Business

I was having a conversation with a friend and business associate of mine the other day. As usual, we were talking about the construction industry. The topic of discussion had come to a book "The E-Myth Contractor", a book by Michael Gerber. In this book, Gerber goes in to the differences of working in your business and on your business. The phrasing is a constant theme throughout the book.

That phrasing has stuck with me because it perfectly captures the constant tension business owners feel between responding to the next crisis (phone calls you just have to take, customer contracts that only you can negotiate, customer service and change order fiascoes that require a personal response) and making sure the company is headed in the right direction. If you’re familiar with Stephen Covey’s classic, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, you’ll notice that I’m talking about the difference between tasks that are “important and urgent” and those that are “important but not urgent.”

Supposing that you have a few moments for self-reflection, here are four topics you might want to consider that will help you work on your company, not in it:

Set concrete goals for 2015. Let’s say one of your goals for the business in 2015 is to expand into a new area, or into a new trade. Carve out an afternoon to really dig deeply into what that means. How many people? How much money are you willing to spend? Where should you locate it, and why? Break each goal down into smaller steps or mini-goals for each month, and then break that into actions that must be done each week. If you don’t schedule weekly tasks that will get you towards your goals, you’ll wake up in June without having done anything. On the other hand, getting to Friday without accomplishing a weekly goal means you have to pay attention to it that weekend.

Plan your hirings and firings. Firing people is just no fun. Every business owner is guilty of procrastinating on firing someone that really needs to go. But if it has to be done, bite the bullet. Do the same thing with hiring. It will make a huge difference to the company’s atmosphere and profitability.

Get your finances in order. How much money did you make last year? Last quarter? Last month? Do you know the answer down to the last penny? It’s tempting to make sure that you can cover your expenses for the next week or month and then move on to the next urgent issue. If you’re not auditing your company’s financial statements, make it a priority and set aside the time and money. This is a particularly sore spot in the construction industry, as it gets difficult to accurately track labor. 70% of construction companies that failed did so because of inaccurate labor tracking. Many construction companies don't know if they made a profit until they receive the last bill, 6 months after the job completed.

Work on long-term strategy. Do you know where you want your company to be in five years? Ten years? Do you want a regional business, or to sell it, or pass it on to future generations? If you’ve written down your long-term goals before, pull them out again and see what has changed.

The construction industry is seeing growth in 2015, and that is a good sign for the entire economy. There is no better time than now to be ready to grow, so if you have the chance to carve out some time to work on your company rather than in it, I urge you to take it!

Herbert Timpson
www.busybusy.com
[email protected]
435.212.0136