David Cohen

The Boomer Business Coach, Owner, Lead Coach and Facilitator

This week, I share some thoughts on management…managing yourself and your teams…

Here is the big clue about managing…don’t manage, lead…
We need more leaders, not managers…

Management: Lead don’t manage

Management, or “manglement” as my good friend and fellow business coach Jamie Crookston calls it, is the tendency to mangle things that you are put in charge of running.

Why is this? My thought is that we aren’t trained to be managers. So don’t manage. Lead!

We can all lead. The way I see it is that when you lead you motivate others in a way that inspires them to give the best they can. If you’re a solo-preneur, then you lead in areas of the business so you maximize results in every aspect of your business. For example, look at the various elements of your business. You’ve got accounting, marketing, finance, sales, administration, planning, community development, human resources and operations.

What you want to do is look at each aspect of your business and see how you can maximize the results and minimize the effort. Look and see where you can save time, money and resources (both external and internal). How can you take small incremental steps to do better in each of these key result areas?

This is good leadership. You’re not getting caught up in the managing of minutia but you’re looking at the big picture and making improvements on a slow and steady pace in all aspects of the business. It might mean that you have to hire employees or contract out some of the work. You want to maximize your time so that it’s spent on the most profitable elements of your business.

If you love making things but hate selling, hire a sales rep. If you love the marketing but need a second opinion, get a marketing coach. If you can’t stand the books or the administrative paper work, and most of us can’t, then hire a bookkeeper/admin person.

When you plan each element of your business, and you aim for higher heights, get the help you need and stick to what you do best. Then, and only then, are you taking on a leadership role in your business.

Some experts, like international management speaker and business coach Donald Cooper, suggest you want your business to earn you up to four times what you’d earn working for someone else. It’s got to make sense. It’s got to make dollars too or why do it?

I love how Michael Gerber, author of the book “The E-Myth Revisited”, explains it. You want to work on not in your business. You want to develop a business that can eventually run without you. It’s in this moment that as a “true” entrepreneur you can then use the extra time you have towards building another business or expanding your existing one. You don’t want to just create a job for yourself, as Michael Gerber would suggest you want to build a life. What would you have to give up in order to have total joy and passion in your business venture?

What would your business look like if it was all about fun? What would need to change? What would have to happen? Who needs to do what? What work would you have to give up getting to that point?

If you can handle the things that frustrate you in your business, then you’re on your way to leading and not managing. Now, if you run a big business…get out of the micro managing and get into the leading.

Here are some suggestions: hire people that are better at the things you’re weak at; learn to trust and lose your expectations. Yes, people may disappoint you sometimes but they are, after all, only human. If you lead in a true sense of the word, then you inspire people to go where you want them to go.

For any history buffs reading this…look at some of our greater leaders…

Look at Winston Churchill. He rallied the troops when things looked bleak during World War II. In Canada we can look to our own Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau. When asked about how he would handle and catch the FLQ (Front de libération du Québec—a terrorist group that operated in Quebec, Canada during the ‘60s and ‘70s) for the murder of Pierre Laporte and the kidnapping of Robert Cross, he replied to the media that he would do whatever it took.  ”Just watch me,” he told them. In that moment he galvanized the nation and introduced the war measures act…an act that hadn’t been seen in Canada in 30 years.

People believed these men and believed in them; they trusted them. They felt confident in following the direction that they were taking and were on board with their policies. Sometimes leading others is not all hearts and flowers; it’s about taking someone down a path less travelled. It’s about taking your team over the abyss…safely.

So when it comes to management are you going to lead or micro manage? Trust me—micro managing is time consuming, energy zapping and it destroys morale. Leading does the opposite, as long as your team is on board with your vision, mission and goals.

So yes, there is more to comment on about management. But as you’re starting up, focus on leading…it begins with you and what you want and desire from this business venture!

Sometimes the most important person to manage is you. What’s between your ears? Your mindset is key to your success…some even say it’s “mind over matter”…in other words, if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter!

Make it a great week ahead!
Cheers/David

David Cohen is an author, business coach, facilitator and former host/producer of the Small Business Big Ideas Show