As an entrepreneur or business leader, do you feel the overwhelm that business growth is ALL your responsibility? You have a team but there’s a feeling that everyone always needs something from you or you just can’t get enough done. Frustration continually steals more of your joy as you’re always falling short of what you should be doing in your business. Your team continually wears you down and your losing confidence. You can feel the massive constraint in your business, but you’re having a tough time pinpointing exactly what is causing it.

That’s a problem…a BIG problem.

You’re not at fault and neither is your team. Nine times out of ten it’s a faulty system. A system that has you as the bottleneck and holding back your business growth. Instead of fixing the system, most businesses go in one of two directions. They either take the mentality that they need a stronger team. Their methods have got them this far, and they need to find a team that is more like them. This creates turnover and an unattractive culture. The other route is staying with team members who are completely overwhelmed and frustrated. This causes the business to stagnate and makes it very difficult to grow.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a better system? Think about having:

This is different from the overwhelm you naturally feel as an entrepreneur or a business leader. There’s always going to be a slight feeling overwhelm when running a business. The feeling of, “I’m doing a lot” or “I have to do more.” This feeling of overwhelm is when you feel like there’s way too much at the end. of the day. The feeling of overwhelm that comes when you didn’t get done and it requires you to compromise the other areas of your life: family, health, and relationships. This feeling is where you feel completely overwhelmed by everything that you need to do. This is a sign that you’re responsible for too much of the business growth and you need a new plan.

You’re the biggest bottleneck when you’re getting interrupted, and there’s just a constant need for information from you. This is an indicator that your team does not feel empowered to make the decision, or worse, they simply do not have the authority to make the decision. This is not a pain point when the business is starting up and it’s a 2-3 person operation. It’s also harder to recognize when the business is under ten people, but this will become more apparent as your team grows.

Would you like to see your team take more initiative? Do you feel like you’re kind of prodding them along? It can be frustrating to feel like you constantly have to micromanage your team. This is where many business leaders begin to think that they need a new team. They need to find team members that will take initiative. However, most of the time, taking initiative is a clarity problem. It’s difficult to take initiative if they do not know where they are going or how their work fits into the overall process.

Not only do they stop taking initiative, but now they get nervous. Your team begins to get anxious. They start making mistakes, and they start missing small things. They start doing things that really are out of character and we wouldn’t even expect from them. This happens because it’s difficult to tell what you’re thinking as a business leader. There’s not a good system in place for them to receive feedback and improve. When your team is tentative they’re operating from a mindset of, “I just don’t want to screw up.” This causes them to lose creativity and deliver extraordinary results.

On the surface, all of these symptoms appear to be issues with your team. You become susceptible to the idea that your team is holding you back. If you’re not careful, you will subconsciously begin to believe that your team is working against you. They are not your enemy. Your enemy is a system that has created a constraint on your business growth. This can be solved by creating a strategic plan that guides your team. A plan that communicates where they’re going, what the destination is, and what’s happening next. This will put a stop to you always having to fill people in, answer too many questions, and doing everything for them.

As simple as it sounds, creating a business growth plan is not always easy. As an entrepreneur, you like to be confident. You like to have clarity and know where we’re going. Without realizing it, you may feel a little anxiety around discussing business growth strategies and plans. This anxiety occurs because the simple act of creating a plan is a level of admission that you don’t know where you’re going. If you did….then why do you need a plan? This can cause some to feel vulnerable or weak – so they either don’t plan or do all the planning themselves. However, when you do all the planning yourself your team has less ownership. Your team will always have more conviction in executing the plan when they help create it.

What are you aiming at? Where are you going? When these are answered for your team, their confidence will go up, their clarity will go up, their commitment to the team will go up. You’ll start to get more out of your current team instead of thinking that they need to be replaced. You’ll actually increase your return on investment into your team. Think about it – you’ll get more productivity but for the same price. Creating this type of clarity for your team will allow you to have a completely different experience of running the business. You not only remove yourself as the bottleneck of all decisions, but you begin developing a high executing team and winning culture.

If you’re an overwhelmed business owner, tired of being the bottleneck in your business, sick of not getting the progress you want. If you know you could be helping more, doing more, making a bigger impact, and making a bigger income, making your life better for you and your family….reach out to us. Let us help you. Hire a business growth consultant, and develop the a business growth plan that will grow your business, develop your team, and set you free.