I was talking with a business owner last week who has built a successful company over a couple of decades. We were talking about growth, his team and what the business needs to look like over the next few years. Eventually, the conversation landed on delegation.
A lot of the knowledge required to run parts of his company still lives in his head. He knows how things should be done, he can see the finished product before anyone else can, and when something really matters, he has a tendency to get involved and make sure it’s done right. That’s not unusual for a business owner, and at first it sounded like a systems problem. Maybe he needed better processes, better training or better people.
But the longer we talked, the more I realized there was something else behind it.
Years ago, he had someone working for him whom he really trusted. He treated him well, paid him well and gave him access to the business. That person eventually took his customer information, left and started competing against him.
You don’t forget something like that. And whether he realizes it or not, I think some of the way he runs his company today was shaped by what happened all those years ago.
It got me thinking about the scar tissue we accumulate as business owners.
Someone takes advantage of your trust, so you’re a little more guarded with the next person. A bad hire costs you a bunch of money, so you’re slower to make the next hire. A salesperson disappoints you, so you gradually take sales back yourself. A partnership goes badly, so you’re hesitant when the next partnership opportunity comes along. A marketing company burns through your money without producing much, so the next time someone suggests increasing the marketing budget, your first reaction is no.
At the time, those reactions make perfect sense. In many cases, they’re probably the right response. You learned something, adjusted and protected the business.
The problem comes when we keep making the same protective decision long after the circumstances have changed.
I’ve certainly done versions of this myself. The difficult part is recognizing it because we rarely think, “I’m making this decision because of something that happened ten years ago.” Instead, we tell ourselves we’re being careful. We’re protecting the company. Nobody can do it as well as we can. We tried that before and it didn’t work.
And sometimes we’re right.
But sometimes that’s just scar tissue talking.
As our businesses grow, I think we have to occasionally challenge some of the rules we’ve created for ourselves along the way. Not because the lesson we learned was wrong. It may have been exactly the lesson we needed at the time. But the business has changed, the people around us have changed and hopefully we’ve changed too.
What protected the business at one stage can eventually become something that keeps it from getting to the next one.
I’ve been thinking about one question since that conversation:
What decision are you still making today because of something that happened years ago?
It might be worth looking at again.
Mike