Julian’s Business Tips: Business is Blooming!

Julian’s Business Tips: Business is Blooming!

Spring is a time for growth, and if your small business is growing, you may be thinking about recruiting new staff.

Here’s a really useful exercise you might want to try before you start recruiting seriously.

Small businesses are usually based around a few people, and as they grow, it’s usually because an opportunity to employ a nice or useful person arises.

This gets you to the next stage – what I call ‘the gang’s all here: where there’s a gang of you who get the work done. Yes, some areas are mainly dealt with by one person, but everyone mucks in as required. A lot of family businesses work this way.

If you want to develop and grow past the gang stage, you need to do a bit of planning. Firstly look at the business you want to grow into (not the one you are now) – and write down a speculative organisation chart of the roles that you need. Don’t worry about what happens now, just look at the jobs that will need filling in that new business.

Now write down the ‘big picture’ responsibilities for each of those roles. This forms a list of all the major tasks that need to be done in your bigger business
At this point, realise that, your current ‘gang’ is probably fulfilling most of those responsibilities, albeit on a somewhat ad-hoc basis.

Based on that realisation, finally write down who is currently covering each responsibility for each of those roles. By recruiting to try and fill one of the bigger business’s roles, you’ll also be able free up an existing member of staff to concentrate on what they do best, strengthening your current business.

And you’ll also be sowing the organisational seeds of your future success. And let’s hope those seeds grow into a blooming great business!

julian@julianberry.co.uk