Does Your Business Suffer From
Perfectionitis?
When you started your company, you most likely did
everything. From answering the
phone, to processing the mail, to making the decision
to hire employees as your business grew, you’ve
done it all!
Some of that was out of necessity, but, you’ll have to
admit some of it was due to a condition known as
perfectionitis.
Now that your company has grown, are you still in that
startup frame of mind? If a task isn’t done the way
you’d do it, do you need to make corrections? Is it
possible that given the parameters of a particular task,
there might be a number of different ways to
accomplish the same thing? Would you be willing to
admit it is possible that an employee might
have an approach to a task completely different from
yours, but with the same or better results than if you’d
done it yourself? How much freedom do you give your
staff?
In the March 2007 issue of ENTREPRENEUR
magazine, Geoff Williams, author of an article titled
Dead Zone, quotes Margaret Morford, president of The
HR Edge, as saying “Every time someone
presents you with a problem or issue, ask
them, ‘What do you think we should do about
it?’ If
you do not like the suggestion, ask this as a follow-
up: ‘If we did that, what would you do about (fill in the
blank here)?’ Give them time to think. They will either
fix your greatest objection, in which case you should
implement their suggestion, or they will offer another
one.”
A strategy I find works well when you find yourself
making decisions from a closed perspective is to
put yourself in the future. Visualize the
person you will become when you are running a
wildly successful company - that successful
entrepreneur, one whom others
approach for advice. How would that person look at
the decisions you’re making today? Would that
person allow others the leeway to make contributions
to the business in their own way?
Having perfectionitis doesn’t mean you change your
standards - you will still have the same standards
for
the quality of service and products that go out the
door. The specific steps one takes to get to that
quality can be left to the individual employee as long
as you have clearly defined goals and quality control
checks built into the process. Allowing others to do
what they do best, frees you to be the entrepreneur - to
be the visionary, growing your business - your
revenue,
your profits and your cashflow.
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