Are you the bottleneck in your business?

When you hear “bottleneck” it very rarely refers to the neck of a bottle, instead the term has become useful imagery for a narrow point that impedes the flow of anything from traffic to information.

I’m sure you’ve experienced the annoyance of 4 lanes of traffic going down to 2 – usually on a busy weekend when you just want to get out of town! Now imagine that frustration is a daily or hourly occurrence for your team.

You might be the bottleneck in your business without ever realizing it.

Entrepreneurs who have transitioned from a solo gig to a small team are most at risk, but all business owners can be bottleneckers. It’s hard to make the deliberate shift from doing it all yourself and your own way, to handing over your business to another person. Especially if that person is working virtually and you’ve never met face to face.

(Zoom doesn’t count.)

Instead of setting your employees up with the proper training, systems and feedback processes you insist on knowing what’s going on. Everywhere. All the time.

How do you know you’re the bottleneck?

Employees have to check in with you frequently, even if their work is all good most of the time
You’re the only one with access to important data the team needs to operate
Entire sections of the business require your continual oversight, such as customer service or Facebook advertising
You’ve been frustrated by interruptions to your workflow, but more so when you’re not consulted
On more than one occasion your team has been apprehensive about taking initiative

I could go on but if you’re starting to see yourself in the picture I’m painting, it’s time to move on to the solution.

Being a bottleneck of information in your business is a recipe for disaster.

When you’re the only one in your business who can operate and oversee the business you no longer have a team, you have zombies who need constant instruction to do anything.

And I know what’s going through your mind, the same fears that every business owner has when it’s time to let go of the day to day work:

• they’ll screw up
• I’ll lose customers
• no one can do this like me
• I just want to know the quality is high

And all of those excuses can be solved when you have properly trained your team, provided them with reference systems and have a process for checking in.

Unbottlenecking your business isn’t about ignoring what’s going on and letting everything fall apart, it’s ensuring that information and decisions can flow without you in the middle of every conversation, draft or discussion.

Your business can’t grow when you’re the bottleneck.

If it does, it’s only temporary because eventually the pressure on the narrowing pressure point will explode. You’ll burn out, balls will get dropped, customers will be let down and your team could get fed up and quit.

I’ve seen business bottlenecks ranging from the new business owner all the way to to 7-figure companies that look like they have it all figured out – at least from the outside. Inside, the pressure is building and building and it cannot be sustained.

(Note: as the pressure builds these entrepreneurs tend to turn to extreme methods of performance enhancing tools in an attempt to maintain control. No amount of supplements, yoga, meditation, mind-altering drugs, sleep control or getting up at 5am can unbottleneck your business. Nor should you have to be superhuman to run a business that can survive without your constant attention.)

So, what does an unbottleneck business look like?

First, the roles are clearly defined and the owner or CEO retains the work that they are uniquely suited to do and fills their creative cup. Imagine doing more of the work you love and less soul-sucking tasks. Feels good, right?

Second, repeatable tasks have clear and easy to follow systems for both training and reference. These docs and videos and images are updated as often as needed and are the fastest way for team members to get answers. Hello, 156 fewer interruptions a week!

Third, there are regular and focused means of reviewing your team’s work, providing feedback and incorporating that feedback into the existing systems so you know what’s going on, you can review the quality and make judgments as the CEO about what you want – without getting in the middle of work every day.

I won’t pretend that these steps are easy to accomplish and you often need an outside perspective to develop the systems and processes for your company. It can also help to have someone your team can speak to openly about their frustrations and moderate those discussions.

Over the past decade I’ve worked in a number of 6 and 7-figure online companies and while I’ve been the COO and project manager, what I’m really doing is unbottlenecking a business. Keeping information moving smoothly and projects on task not only helps my clients reach their goals (whether it be a book launch, new program, website redesign or podcast) but it keeps the teams productive and happy.

Interested in learning more about how to stop being the bottleneck in your business? Click here to request a free, no-obligation, discovery call and share with me what you’d like to see change in your business.