Has Your Business Outgrown the Way You Lead?

You come in with something important you want to work on.

Maybe it is a new market you have been thinking about, a problem with margins, a key hire you need to make, or simply some time to think about where the business is headed.

Before you get very far, someone needs you.

There is a customer situation that needs an answer. An employee wants to know how you want something handled. A decision has been sitting because everyone is waiting for you to make it.

So you take care of it.

That is what you have always done. You know the customers. You know the work. You know how the business operates, and most of the time you can see the answer faster than anyone else.

By the time you get back to what you intended to work on, something else has happened. And then something else.

At the end of the day, you have worked hard. You have solved problems. You have kept things moving.

But the thing you came in wanting to work on is still sitting there.

Tomorrow you will try again.

This is how an owner can continue leading a growing business much the same way they led it when nearly everything could run through them.

And for quite a while, it still works.

That is part of what makes the change difficult to see. You are still capable of solving the customer problem. You probably can make the decision faster. You know the answer to the employee's question. There is usually a perfectly good reason for getting involved.

But over time, people become accustomed to bringing decisions to you. Problems find their way to your desk. Your day fills with things you are very capable of handling, while the work that only you can do keeps getting pushed aside.

You keep doing what has always worked.

It just isn't producing the same result anymore.

That is often a signal that the business needs something different from you.

Last year I wrote about The Six Leadership Skills You Can't Win Without.

I still believe those skills matter. But in a growing business, leadership development becomes much less theoretical.

It happens when you begin to realize that answering every question may be keeping someone else from learning how to answer it. Being available for everything leaves too little time for the things that really require you. Staying close to the business no longer means you have to remain in the middle of everything.

That can be a difficult transition because you are moving away from work you know how to do. You have spent years becoming good at it.

But the business is asking something different of you now.

It needs you to think farther ahead. It needs other people to grow into responsibilities you once carried yourself. It needs you to decide where your involvement still matters and where it is beginning to get in the way.

So the next time you finish a long day having handled almost everything except the thing you intended to work on, pay attention to that.

It may not be a time-management problem.

It may be a leadership signal.

And that is when I ask owners a question:

What does your business need you to be now?

Not what it needed you to be when you started it.

What does it need you to be today?

If you are trying to answer that question, a What's Next Direction Session gives you a chance to step away from the day-to-day, look at where the business is now, and decide what comes next.