A robust structure

9th July 2015

Something I haven’t blogged about for some time is business structure, and the value it has in so many ways. People who run small businesses with less than 5 employees, and in particular businesses which involve family members, often can’t see the reason for writing down an organisational structure, after all “everyone knows what they should be doing,” or “everyone mucks in together.” However, this a sure recipe for disaster in the longer run, because no-one is really responsible for any one thing, and the chances of things being missed or duplicated becomes greater and greater as the business grows.

Sometimes business owners say they don’t want to write down a structure, particularly when it comes to including their family members, as they feel it formalises things too much, and may cause conflict. I believe the exact opposite is true, because in fact the clearer everyone is about what is expected of them, the less likely it is that confrontation will occur. The other advantage of specifying the roles and responsibilities is that everyone should know how they should be spending their time. This can be particularly useful where family members work in the business, part time or full time, for without clarity of their responsibilities they are constantly asking the business owner what to do next. In other words the business owner then finds that they are almost having to find things for their employee to do, and worse still, often have to explain how to do it, and then check regularly it is being done correctly. In fact it ends up in the business owner effectively doing the other person’s job, and not being able to concentrate on their own key tasks.

So if you are wondering how to keep employees busy without constant supervision, write down your structure, allocate responsibilities and ensure that what they have to do is systemised.

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