Putting On The Shareholder Hat

As the owner of a business, it is inevitable that you will wear many different hats.  You will be the company decision maker, shareholder, HR manager, manager, technician, bookkeeper, business strategist, etc.  Too often the role of shareholder gets too little attention.  I am going to make the argument that is is one of the most important roles for you to give attention.

Why does the role of shareholder get left behind?  Because the owner of the business is too busy wearing the other hats in their business.  In the day to day operations there are always more urgent items that are calling for your attention.  There is a breakdown in the workflow processes.  Payroll needs to be made.  An important customer needs something to be corrected.  Employees need training on how to improve their work.  There are always urgent items on the table.   Because the items are urgent they tend to be like a squeaky wheel shouting at us.  I need you to take care of me now.

Urgent does not mean it is important.   There will always be more things to do each day than there is time to complete them.  The key to growth and success is determining what is important versus what is not important.   If you focus on only completing the important items in your business, growth in success is the natural result.  When you focus on urgent not important items, you feel like a rat on a treadmill.   Burnout, stagnation and frustration are the results you will get when you focus on unimportant urgent items.  You will always feel like there is never enough time in the day.

Let me be clear about this.  Unless you focus on important tasks you will by default focus on non-important urgent tasks.  You will be perpetually putting out fires.  With the focus on putting out fires, new fires start and you have to focus on putting out the new fires.  It becomes a never ending process of firefighting.

The role of shareholder is important because it will direct the growth and success of your business.  When you put on the hat of shareholder you are looking at the important tasks.  You are analyzing your return on investment.  Are you getting the right amount of profit for your business?  Are your actively attracting your ideal customer?  Do you need to add new services or products?   Have you fired clients that are no longer your ideal clients?  Are you spending you most important resource of time in the correct areas of your business?  What changes need to occur for you to reach the next growth goal of your business?  What strategies do you need in order to grow?  What do you need to do to move your business into the vision you have for your business.

Let’s compare important versus non-important.

• Important – What strategy do I need to implement to increase my annual revenue?
• Non-important – How am I going to make payroll this week?

If you spent the right amount of time on the important, the non-important will be irrelevant.