Has it happened to you to feel overwhelmed in your entrepreneurship? Have you worked many hours and in the end you feel that you have achieved very little?
Have you focused on many activities of little value to your company instead of those that make a difference? Maybe it’s time to start managing your organization’s talent.
You begin to undertake excited, with dreams, ideals and many goals, little by little that business idea begins to take shape and you begin to see your effort materialized. You are willing to sacrifice your energy, time, savings and even the perception of security of being an employee… in exchange, that business begins to grow and give small successes.
Your time begins to be insufficient, you have a decrease in your energy and although there is income, you begin to perceive that the volume of work exceeds you. Sometimes no matter how hard you push you can feel that your business does not accelerate.
That is a key moment to decide whether to invest in learning new things that improve your productivity or in hiring talent, which indicates that you are doing things right.
The problem lies in trying to do both without focus or planning and diluting your mental, physical and financial resources.
Manage the talent of the entrepreneur
What is talent management? It is your talent attraction, identification, development and loyalty strategy that is parallel to and supports your strategic plan, as Rob Siltzer points out in his book Integrated talent management.
When we talk about talent management in organizations, it includes you as an entrepreneur along with the people who work with you.
In general, entrepreneurs enjoy learning and can invest a lot of time and money in doing so, they usually go “shooting without aiming”, acquiring information as problems appear, with the intention of solving them.
A common mistake identified by Michael E. Gerber in his book The myth of the entrepreneur it’s that, as experts in their own line of business, they have a tendency to try to grab and fix everything, usually unconsciously.
With this paradigm they become the bottleneck of the company. They are trained to be the problem solvers in all areas, neglecting the functions and decisions that add more value.
In coaching experience with senior executives, I have found it helpful to address this phenomenon through the following steps:
- Identify the broader purpose of the business. Usually it is its development and the impact it has on society and the economy.
- Define the role as CEO and competency profile to achieve this purpose. Determine in which functions and decisions you contribute the most value and start training yourself in that and developing your leadership.
- Work on the belief of having to be an expert in all the processes of entrepreneurship.
- Generate a DEAL plan (Define, Eliminate, Automate and Liberate), as proposed by Tim Ferris in his book The four-hour workweek and which we will talk about in another article.
- Follow up on the plan to ensure the delegation of responsibilities.
First steps to managing talent
At this point you have already made the decision that to continue the success of your venture you need to manage the talent that forms or will form your team. Based on our experience, we tell you what are the initial steps that you must implement.
- Define the order of your process as proposed by Mike Michalowicz (sales, profitability, order, impact and legacy) in his book One step at a time.
- Build your org chart from left to right based on that process.
- Put in the organization chart the names of who occupies each position in the process, even if at this point you and others occupy several boxes.
- Generate job descriptions and profiles by competencies that define what you should do, how you should do it and what characteristics the person occupying the position should have.
- The priority of recruiting, development or contracting external services must be from left to right within your organization chart to ensure the viability of your value chain.
With this you will be able to start designing your processes of attraction, identification, development and loyalty.
- This article was written by Enrique Torres Chavarría, CEO and Consultant of Be Great Analytics.
Editorial Team The editorial team of EMPRENDEDOR.com, which for more than 27 years has worked to promote entrepreneurship.