Because it’s your business, it’s almost inevitable that you will be the leader. The skills you require to lead a growing business might be different from the skills you use now. You need to have a vision, not only to see how things fit together, but for the future of the business.
You’ll need a vision of where your business will be one, five and ten years down the track.
Be the entrepreneur! Have the vision, personality, and energy to drive your business. Someone has to be the leader and make the tough decisions. That someone is you!
The leader’s role is to identify where the business needs to be positioned in the future. On the other hand, the manager’s role is to point the business in the right direction, and get the business there. Having said that, the buck stops with the leader.
Probably the best example I can give is that of my own business. I’ve identified how best to grow the business in order to meet the needs of our major stakeholders. I pass that direction on to the business manager. She basically rejigs, retools, and repositions the
business to facilitate this.
Unless the leader and the business manager are the same person, the leader won’t get involved in the day to day operations of the business.
My manager concentrates on having the business make a profit. My focus, as the leader, is about building value. These two goals need to be integrated so that the business direction keeps moving forward.
An important consideration here is that I, as the major stakeholder in our company, know more about the business, the expectations of the stakeholders and the needs of clients and staff, and have more information available to me, than anyone else. With this information, I’m in the best position to make judgments and decisions.
One such decision might be that we plan to open another office in the nearest capital city. I might develop a time frame of one year within which this needs to be achieved. This decision would be based on a range of information, such as a demographic analysis, statistics on business growth in the area, and countless other factors.
I would then meet with my manager and discuss the goal with her. Then, she would start to implement it. She might begin by setting up an answering service in the city with a local number. A newspaper advertising campaign might be next. This might be followed by the employment of a person from that city who has well-established contacts. Then, once a consistent flow of business is established, she
might rent a small office for the new team member. Before you know it we’ll have offices in every major city!
The leader comes up with the vision. The manager implements it. Together, they create the business’s future.