- Being afraid of being the “bad cop”. I am seven years into Sample Supports and I just now feel like I have a team of people that can be “the heavy” while I step back and focus on other things. It has taken all seven years of me being “the bad cop” to get there. It has taken countless hours of holding a line and training others to do the same.
I envision my business as me drawing out a straight line in front of me towards the goal. I then work every day to get all of my team members walking along the straight line. People fall off the line, they try to make the line a circle, they try and kick the line to see if it will move, they try to draw new lines and get people to come over to their side, they put their big toe over the line just to see if you will notice. It takes a lot of correction to keep people operating in a consistent and uniform way. You see, when you are building a business you are building a brand. Your brand consists of your people and your people have to know the goal and stay on the path.
It isn’t that I want to be bad cop — I’d much rather be a cheerleader. It kind of sucks when people think you are the devil in heels. It kind of sucks when disgruntled employees write mean things about you online. It also kind of sucks when you have to hold people to doing their jobs and they just try to slither around the expectation. It’s not that I “want” to be the bad cop, but I am fully comfortable owning the role if it is what it takes to keep my company running, growing and thriving.
Starting a business is like birthing a child….like birthing quintuplets, is more like it. It is a three ring circus with high energy, difficult personalities, big egos and unclear boundaries while you are learning how to be a parent while also running a business. It takes a minute to realize “Oh, I’m the parent here….they are all looking to me to set the expectation”. Once I learned this as a leader I embraced my role and parented the shit out of my baby. It took a lot of time-outs and difficult conversations and pouting and tears and slammed doors. It took a lot of careful attention to my parenting results to learn what is ok and when to say “Homey don’t play that” — you can take your tantrum-throwing self somewhere else.
Remember though that your star team members will appreciate the expectation — they WANT to come to work everyday to a healthy environment where everyone is playing on the same team. They don’t want to come to work AND have to parent their peers…that is an unfair expectation and it will make them leave. Go ahead and take full responsibility for being the bad cop and teach others that it is ok to say “No thank you — we don’t do that here”.
As the owner, you ARE the example for what is ok. You ARE the company and the standard you set in those early years and beginning teams is what will define your culture forever.
You have to be willing to hold the line. In fact, you ARE the line — gatekeep your business like you would gatekeep 5 toddlers learning how to walk. Boundaries, rules, and expectations is the name of the game….
- Not knowing your industry. When you launch into “all the things” it takes to make a new company run you will be running fast while spinning in circles. The sheer administration and logistics you will be responsible for can turn your time and world upside down. Because of this, the actual work of the business has to be the part that you know so well you can do in your sleep (though you won’t be sleeping much for awhile).
You have to know your industry like you know your name.
You have to know it inside out, upside down and backwards. You also have to be able to effectively perform the core components of your company with skill and ease. You may find yourself being the only one left to do them now and again, especially when you are just starting out. Yet, the core reason to know your business is more than you being able to be the lone survivor:
The most important reason for knowing your business well is that you have to know what the standard of excellence is so you can hold everyone else to it.
At Sample Supports I know exactly what it looks like when someone is excellent at working directly with people with disabilities. I know what an amazing behavior plan looks like. I know what an awesome program manager focuses on and I know what skilled HR and finance teams can produce. I get it and I can see problems a mile away. I can weed out the problems and find the talented roses. I know what it takes to do those jobs and I am confident in my ability to step in and do every position if I need to. I also am confident in my ability to recognize the skill in others.
If you don’t understand your industry, you will be scared of holding people accountable because you don’t even know where the standard of excellence lies. - Resistance to Systems. As an entrepreneur you have two choices — you can build a self-proprietor job and do EVERYTHING yourself. You will never take a vacation, never leave your phone, and be a slave to your schedule. Or, you can build a big business and earn passive income. I read “Cash Flow Quadrants” by Robert Kyosaki in college and this book changed my whole perspective on my choice to do a big business….and build it quickly.
The only way to build a big business is to build amazing systems. Build a workflow for everything you do and then refine it as you go. This will increase your team’s competence and skill. It will also create a flexible lifestyle for yourself.
Build systems and never stop. The “fun” of running a big business is treating it like a game of systems. How can you build a fortress that cannot be taken down? This is the daily game I play in my mind. I see every problem as an opportunity to improve the system.
Entrepreneurs that try to hoard information and resist the implementation of systems will forever be caught in a dysfunctional spinning wheel of turnover, untrained employees and poor quality of services. It will result in poor sales, a bad reputation and burned out leaders. It will result in you shutting down your business — it is just a matter of time.
Entrepreneurs have to build systems to stay steady amidst change. Change is inevitable and the people that prepare for it are the ones that will survive.
Be the bad cop. Know your industry. Build systems….and then watch it grow.
See more at: https://medium.com/@carmensample