As a business owner, it can be hard to let go and delegate tasks to your team as your company grows. Marcus Steffen explains how this can damage your business in the long run.

How many times have you had a bad boss? Perhaps they micromanaged you, you had no freedom, or they constantly undermined you? And you think to yourself that when you are a manager/start your own business, you will be different. You are going to do it right. I can tell you that most people will not be able to do it right, and the reason is that people do not like to change. But if you can grasp the steps you need to make to change, then this is where a business can grow and be successful.

It is a strange topic to talk about, but I feel that in our industry (as in almost every other industry) it is a major issue. We have all had these experiences, and it is a constant topic of memes across social media, and jokes you share with your colleagues. This is the exact reason that made me curious, and caused me to find out that I had to make some big changes in running my business. But let us take it back to the start with an example: starting your own lighting design consultancy.

Starting Out

You have decided to go it alone, build your own business, and you are going to do it right. You have saved up some money, you have done the work setting up a portfolio website, social media and maybe you have a couple of projects to work on from contacts. You get to work, and you are doing everything – the meetings, CAD, schedules, snagging, making the coffee, doing the accounts, social media posts: everything. This is what it means to start the business on your own. You are responsible for it all, you are making the money, and you are going to grow. That motivation and dedication is what will help you succeed and get to the next level.

A year later, you have a number of projects, you are working 60-70 hours a week and struggling to keep up. Normally it goes in one of two directions here. Either you keep going this way, your marketing drops off, you finish the projects and then have no work. You go into massive peaks and troughs of work, and it is very stressful. The other way is that you hire someone to help you out: a junior designer! This is amazing, since they will be producing drawings and schedules while you are meeting clients.

Expanding and building a team

If you have gone the second route, and hired someone, this will hopefully continue and you will eventually have a team of designers, and this is where things get difficult. While you have some staff, it is almost certain that you have the same mindset as when you first started: you do everything, you are responsible for it all, and you are worried someone is going to make a mistake. And this inability to delegate and let go of responsibility is what leads to the classic bad boss traits.

As someone builds their business, they need to evolve their mindset from being the worker into being a manager. The skills of a manager are completely different from those of a worker. With management you need to support your team, you need to enable them to do the best work possible, and you need to make sure that they are engaged (dare I say passionate) with the outcomes of this work. This means you need to give them control and responsibility, and accept that there might be mistakes. It also means that you need to let go of your ego, which motivated and drove you through the initial stages of the business and accept that others are going to produce the beautiful designs you create.

How to let go

True delegation of work is essential for any business. While some owners may feel that they want to stay at the core of the company, they are actually doing a disservice to their clients. The fact that they do not have a team who can take ownership and responsibility means that you are putting those clients at risk. If the owner was to fall ill or be unable to work for some reason, then their clients will be let down. On the inverse of this, if they have a team who can deliver the work without relying on them, then there is more redundancy built in, so that no one person becomes a bottleneck.

A lot of owners and managers find it difficult to delegate to employees. They worry about mistakes being made, which may cause problems, angry clients and potential penalties. Realistically, there will always be mistakes made by anyone on a project. The projects we all work on are hugely complex, are going to have errors, and even the owner/manager will make mistakes. No one is perfect. So how do reconcile the fact that we don’t want mistakes to happen, it is making us worried about delegating, but this is preventing workers from doing what they do best?

Ensuring delegation works

The key is putting systems and processes in place to prevent mistakes from happening in the first place, and then having ways of resolving those mistakes when they happen. This is where the difference shows up between someone who is amazing at their job (in our case lighting design) and someone who is building a business or managing a team. These are two completely different skill sets. A business owner or manager is going to want to create systems and processes as a way to ensure that the work is being done to the correct standard. Some examples of these:

• Checklists for what has been produced and issued.

• Guides on how to do anything, from laying out a CAD plan to building a fitting schedule.

• Peer review and checking by others on the team.

• Templates for anything structured, such as CAD, meeting minutes, standard emails, etc.

• Software to automate and remove errors in the design process.

• Standard questionnaires for gathering information and client briefs.

There are many other types of systems than these that can be created. These systems and processes ensure there is a structure to the way projects work. Good managers will be taking this out of their heads and putting ways of working in place that team members can follow. This will allow them the freedom to take ownership and know that what they are working on will be correct. They can feel proud of what they are producing, knowing that it is their own work.

As an example, MSLD prevents potential problems by highlighting very complex details during the concept and development design stages. We will look over a project and look at what is particularly challenging. These are added to a list, and we then ensure that we have a final review before submittal of those details in particular. The other elements I then trust the team to be able to deliver themselves.

Reap the secondary benefits

There are other benefits to having a smoother running design process that doesn’t constantly require a manager/owner’s attention. Empowering your employees to have more control over their work, and not micromanaging them will make them happier. This has been shown consistently in research across the world. This also leads to a better working environment, higher staff retention, satisfaction and reduced recruitment costs. It also helps develop those long-term relationships with clients as teams get to know each other and work well together. In addition, with the time won back, it can be spent on critical tasks such as finding new projects and opportunities, training staff, and planning for the future growth of the company.

www.mslightingdesign.co.uk