Strengths and Weaknesses

This particular post isn't exactly in line with the other ones I've been writing, but it's something that I think is important in many elements of business.

Over the years I have come to the conclusion that knowledge of your own strengths and weaknesses, and by extension the knowledge of your own staff of their strengths and weaknesses is essential in successfully executing almost any activity in a small business. There are a lot of reasons for this and a lot of examples I can give, but basically in a nutshell small businesses have many people who wear many hats. If those people try and wear a hat that doesn't fit them, bad things happen.

In larger organizations, employees can find their way into (and are often carefully moved into) very specific roles and silos where they can shine. These kinds of roles can play to their strengths and overcome their weaknesses by providing narrow focus. Human Resources departments have different techniques to identify the strengths of their employees, and therefore are good at putting them into these cozy round holes.

In smaller companies, we (I am lumping myself in with these small businesses) don't have formal HR departments with all the abilities and skills the larger companies have. We also don't have the narrow focus positions and roles where we can snugly fit someone who is really good at one and only one thing. We end up spreading our "hats" out over all of the people in the organization, and when we do this we often end up with less than ideal placement. This is not to say that we should or could afford to hire all those specific skill sets. It is also not to say that people don't "try" and do the best they can. It's just a fact that we can't be sure to put the absolute best person in each role we have. We need to settle.

As a good friend of mine says often, "people work hard and do the best they can - they really want to do a great job - but they simply don't have the skill or education to do any better." I will go one further and say that they have found themselves in a place where their personality is not really suited to the job. There are often jobs that they are really great at, but those are only part of their duties. In other areas, they can sometimes pull down an organization or process because despite their best efforts, it's just not what they are good at.

If we need to settle, then how can we know that we've not just put a person in who is not the best, but we have not in fact selected someone who is BAD at the job. This leads to a second problem we have. We ourselves (as business owners) often uneducated and lack experience in many of the areas if the business. We are literally "making it up as we go" in many, many cases. Particularly things like sales and marketing, accounting, management, project management etc... are not usually an entrepreneurs strong point.

This might even explain why businesses that have lasted 5 years have passed some magic threshold of survival. Could it be that the entrepreneur that started it has to have developed some of those ancillary skills to be able to keep the business running? Could it be that by 5 years, we've learned the bare necessities of marketing, sales, administration, accounting etc. We can get by with what we know and the business can grow?

Once we reach a certain point, we start to delegate some of these skills that we are moderately good at to others. The others that we delegate to are often chosen because they are available - they're the body that can breath that we throw into the job. This can be a terrible mistake, especially in a small business. I have made my share of such mistakes, and I've seen the same mistakes made by those who should know better and have "executive" experience and great pedigree. The mistake these "senior" folks make is that they do not account for their own strengths and weaknesses, and this gets them into serious - and I mean serious - trouble.

I've hired a manager who was really awful at doing paperwork, and he refused (or avoided) preparing sales contracts. He would not delegate to someone who covered his weakness - he was too proud to do that. We were stuck with receivables we couldn't collect because the customer never signed anything that outlined their responsibility in a project. Similarly I've had a manager who really did not know how to deal with conflict but refused to let someone who was good at it intervene. In his case he was so overly concerned with the customer's reaction to an unpleasant conversation that he refused to allow anyone else to even speak to them. In the end they pissed off the customer so badly that we lost all work from them for over 3 years.

The gist of my blog today is to be very, very cautious as a business owner that you are clearly and completely aware of the weaknesses and failings of everyone in your organization. People will do their best to hide what they are not good at. They will hold on as tight as they possibly can to those activities and responsibilities they cannot do. It is up to you to push back against them as much as you possibly can. You also have to watch for the same behavior in yourself and be honest if you really need to step away and delegate.