June 16, 2016- ISSN# 1545-2646
Pick a Desk
We have all heard the phrase – work on your business rather than working in your business.
As business leaders you must constantly be looking at which desk you are working from to run your business. Are you in the role of business owner and leader or are you acting as the order processing person?
This is not to say that one or the other is not important to the success of the business. There are times when leadership must pitch in to get something accomplished. The challenge is that leaders can be technicians at heart. When they participate at that level, that help turns into a comfortable place to visit. Therefore some leaders like to stay there far too long. This ultimately is not for the betterment of the business.
One colleague of mine refers to this as the $40 desk or the $400 desk. If the owner spends too much time at the $40 desk then the work of the $400 desk does not get accomplished. Everyone gets sucked into the $40 desk from time to time but driven leaders quickly find ways to delegate those tasks to someone else and move rapidly back to the $400 desk.
This week, start by establishing a value for your hourly rate when doing owner level activities (working on your business). Once that figure is identified, then start adding up all of the time that your “Owner” rate is being spent to accomplish substantially lower rate functions in your business. That value is the potential additional cost you are paying to get those items completed.
If you had to contract out that work – would you pay someone else at your rate to do these other activities? If you value yourself at $200 per hour and you are doing packing of goods which could be acquired for $20 per hour then you are over paying to package those items by $180 per hour. How many more goods or services need to be sold to make up the excess cost of the overpayment of your services?
As simple as this may appear, the trap is very large and inviting for many to participate in. Work still needs to get done and in many cases the talent to accomplish these tasks are scarce. If you keep doing the same thing to bail yourself out then you will get more of the same results. This is the week to break the trend and start working on the business from the higher paying desk.
Stuck at the lower paying desk and don’t see a way to shift chairs? Give JKL Associates a call at (313) 527-7945 so we can help you rearrange the desk chairs.
Questions or comments – email us at partners@jklassociates.com or call our Office at (313) 527-7945
Copyright – JKL Associates 2016
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JKL Associates
18530 Mack Ave #242
Grosse Pointe Farms MI 48236
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