The cost of too many hats - LocFluent Consulting

In business–especially in small business–the metaphor of “wearing multiple hats” is universally understood and accepted. Of course, when starting a company, the founder must take on multiple roles until enough revenue is generated to not only support the founder but allows them to begin hiring workers who can take on some of the work. For most of us, wearing multiple hats–or performing multiple roles within our companies–is a sign of dedication. To be able to successfully fulfill multiple roles is a badge of honor many gladly wear. For the owners of established and profitable small to mid-sized language service companies, the problem is that they forget to take those hats off and continue to jungle too many tasks.

It is easy to rationalize the retention of too many hats:

“These are small tasks that don’t take much time, it’s just easier if I do them myself.”
“I can’t trust anyone else to do these tasks.”
“By doing these tasks myself, I am saving the company money.”
“No one wants to do the grunt work, and I don’t want to distract my team from their tasks.”
“This internal work doesn’t earn the company money, but they still need to be done.”

All these reasons make sense–in the moment. But if your goal as an owner is to grow your business then you must have the time to work ON the business not IN the business. The first goal should be to start to limit the number of hats you wear as an owner. You only have one hat–managing your business. As you start to delegate tasks to others on your team you should keep accountability top of mind.

What does your org chart say?

For many small LSCs org charts are not even needed. The owner knows who is doing what. But if anyone on your team is handling more than three core functions then it is likely you may know what they are doing, but do you know how they are doing? How individuals perform is about accountability and not just what they do. In this case you need what the author of Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, Gino Wickman calls an accountability chart.

The point of an accountability chart is not to associate specific individuals with specific job titles within your company. Instead, it is about critical functions and who will be accountable for them. Only individuals who are capable and willing to be held accountable for those functions should be assigned in those roles. Once the “right butts are in the right seats” you as the leader of your organization must hold them accountable. For this to be effective follow these rules:

An individual cannot truly be held accountable for more than three core functions. If the functions are that critical, they will constantly compete for time and attention. The more tasks someone does the less accountable they can be held for each. Competing priorities will undermine performance and offer too much room for excuses as to why things are not being finished. Don’t fall into that trap.
You must measure and consistently track performance. You must assign a number to each function–be that a daily, weekly, or monthly goal. Then you must track it consistently and ensure the individual who is responsible for that number is hitting the mark.
All functions managed by an individual must have nearly the same priority. You should use common sense when balancing priorities, but if a task is critical, someone must be held accountable for it. In other words, if someone can ignore something for a week, it’s not critical.

Be creative in designing roles

You have a lot of flexibility as to how to organize your business. You can create roles based on the skills of individuals, for example. Let’s say you have a team member who is an Excel master and she enjoys working with numbers. You may have found your new Business Analyst. No, she isn’t your accountant, but she can handle all the reporting and metrics for your company’s performance. (By the way, if you want your accountability chart to work, you need these metrics to hold everyone on your team accountable. The title of Business Analyst may seem like a role reserved for only large companies, but the sooner you can add this role, the sooner you’ll be able to manage your company more effectively.)

Maybe this hypothetical Business Analyst is a senior project manager looking for new opportunities and wants to move more into management. How better to learn about the company and the business of language services than to learn about the business drivers and measurables needed to understand company performance.

Accountability is about more than clean boxes

Ultimately, it’s more important for individuals to know what they are accountable for and what success looks like. Job titles and tasks may not always align. As a company grows, the blending of roles and occasional sharing of tasks may be necessary and that is OK. But for every task assigned, there must be an implicit accountability that attaches. No one is served by just throwing a task to someone without expecting them to be accountable for it.

Everyone starts out with a lot of hats. Just be sure that you are working to take some off–first from yourself and then from the rest of your team.

Let’s take a look at your organization and how accountability stacks up. Contact LocFluent for no-obligation initial consultation.