蜜蜂窝图片:管理者的困境：放权或者崩溃

“大多数管理者都会陷入放权的困境。你很忙，每件事都要亲力亲为。你很清楚自己需要别人帮忙，但你没有足够的时间寻找并培训别人来帮你。所以，你更加努力地工作，直到自己崩溃。2001年，CD Baby成立三周年。我已有8名员工，但所有其他事情仍然需要我自己做。每周7天，从上午7点工作到晚上10点，自己仍然要经手每件事情。…… ”“在我放权之后，我现在仍然每天工作12个小时，但是，我把所有时间都花在业务改进、优化以及创新上。对我来说，这才是最有趣的事情。这是在玩，不是工作。公司市值在四年里从一百万增长到两千万（美元）……” 

Delegate or die: the self-employed trap.

2011-01-23

Most self-employed people get caught in the delegation trap.

You're so busy, doing everything yourself. You know you need help, but to find and train someone would take more time than you have! So you keep working harder, until you break.

Here's my little tale of how I broke into the delegation mindset:

In 2001, CD Baby was three years old. I had eight employees but I was still doing “everything else” myself. Working 7am to 10pm, seven days a week, everything still went through me.

Every five minutes, my employees had a question for me:

• “Derek, some guy wants to change the album art after it's already live on the site. What do I tell him?”
• “Derek, can we accept wire transfer as a form of payment?”
• “Derek, someone placed two orders today, and wants to know if we can ship them together as one, but refund him the shipping cost savings?”

It was hard to get anything done while answering questions all day. I felt like I might as well just show up to work and sit on a chair in the hallway, just answering employees' questions, full-time.

I hit my breaking point. I stopped going to the office and shut off my phone. Then I realized I was running from my problems instead of solving them. I had to fix this, or I'd be ruined.

After a long introspective night of thinking and writing, I got myself into the delegation mindset.

I had to make myself un-necessary to the running of my company.

The next day, as soon as I walked in the door, someone asked, “Derek, someone whose CDs we received yesterday has now changed his mind and wants his CDs shipped back. We've already done the work, but he's asking if we can refund his set-up fee since he was never live on the site.”

This time, instead of just answering the question, I called everyone together for a minute.

I repeated the situation and the question for everyone.

I answered the question, but more importantly, I explained the thought process and philosophy behind my answer.

“Yes refund his money in full. We'll take a little loss. It's important to always do whatever would make the customer happiest, as long as it's not outrageous. A little gesture like this goes a long way to him telling his friends we're a great company. Everyone always remember that helping musicians is our first goal, and profit is second. You have my full permission to use that guideline to make these decisions yourself in the future. Do what makes them happiest. Make sure everyone who deals with us leaves with a smile.”

I asked around to make sure everyone understood the answer.

I asked one person to start a manual, and write down the answer to this one situation, and write down the philosophy behind it.

Then everyone went back to work.

Ten minutes later, new question. Same process:

1. Gather everybody around.
2. Answer the question, and explain the philosophy.
3. Make sure everyone understands the thought process.
4. Ask one person to write it in the manual.
5. Let them know they can decide this without me next time.

After two months of this, there were no more questions.

Then I showed someone how to do the last of the stuff that was still my job. As part of learning it, they had to document it in the manual, and show it to someone else, too. (Learn by teaching.)

Now I was totally un-necessary.

I started working at home - not going into the office at all.

I had even taught them my thought-process and philosophy about hiring new people. So our two newest employees were entirely found, interviewed, hired, and trained by them. They used that manual to make sure every new employee understood the philosophy and history, and knew how to make decisions for themselves.

I'd call in once a week to make sure everything was OK. It was. They didn't even have any questions for me.

Because my team was running the business, I was free to actually improve the business!

I moved to California, just to make it clear that the running of things was up to them.

I was still working 12-hour days, but now I was spending all my time on improvements, optimizations and innovations. To me, this was the fun stuff. This was play, not work.

While I was away, my company grew from $1M to $20M in four years.

There's a big difference between being self-employed and being a business owner.

Being self-employed feels like freedom until you realize that if you take time off, your business crumbles.

To be a true business owner, make sure you could leave for a year, and when you came back, your business would be doing better than when you left.

(If you're interested in this stuff, read a book called “E-Myth Revisited” by Michael Gerber.)

2011 Derek Sivers