This isn’t the whole ‘fake it before you make it’ argument. I’m taking about how I used to be, a business owner that was so engrossed ‘IN’ the business, that I’d bump from one urgent task to another, attending to panic jobs that sprang from nowhere. To solve this, instead of acting like a small business, I acted as though I was a giant corporation, well went it came to my organisational structure at least. I constructed my business around the three pillars present in ALL businesses: Customer, Support Functions and finally Production and Services. I then mapped out all the Work Centres (or departments) within each pillar. The Customer pillar contains: Marketing, Sales and Customer & Product Development. The Support Function pillar contains: Finance, Quality and Resources to name only a few. The Product & Services pillar is your front-end operation. The production line that produces the widgets or the team that deliver your services.
My organisation chart looked like that of a huge corporation, except my name was in every box! Once I’d identified all of the roles within my business, I could begin organising myself much better. I could plan to perform the finance team role and submit my VAT return in advance instead of last minute. I could start setting time aside to perform the role of marketing for new business. I’ll tell you how I went about organising myself in another post, but I changed from being reactive to proactive!