ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Most owners I talk to reckon the team is the problem. Nobody follows the process, everything comes back to them, and they're putting out fires all day. In this episode I break down five signs it's not actually the team. It's the way you've set the business up, and that comes back to you.
I'm pulling all five straight from the sales calls I've been having the last few months. Same story every time. Good people, no systems, and an owner who's the only place anything gets decided. Fix the setup and the team just figures it out. They're a lot smarter than you probably think.
Here's what I cover:
-Every question in the business defaults to you. One owner had run it this way the whole time he's had the business, then wondered why he had no time. There's no ownership because there's nowhere else to go. Fix is a definition of done in the SOP and a "here's what to do if this happens" section. 80% done by someone else beats 100% done by you.
-You've got SOPs and nobody uses them. A bloke built the whole set two years ago, then kept changing the process and never updated the docs. Now he's got zero SOPs and everyone's back at his desk. Update the SOP the day you change the system, not two years later.
-The AI bot I built for an allied health clinic. Their admin manual was 40 pages so the team just asked the manager instead. We built one-page SOPs for the main tasks and a bot the team can chat to that's read the whole manual. The manager stopped fielding questions and so did the owner.
-You're the only deadline. Financial services team knew the BAS was due and did nothing because the only accountability was the owner asking "why isn't it done." If you have to manually tell the team what's due, you're the bottleneck. An automated task list with overdue, due this week, due today fixes it.
-You hired and it didn't stick. Spoke to someone an hour before recording whose manager leaves every 12 months. No hiring process, no filtering, no onboarding. Hiring is the answer, you're just hiring the wrong people with no system to land them. Run it like a funnel, add filter questions, then a proper 30-day onboarding before you hand the role over.
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro: selected for Australia in the LMS World Cup
00:49 Five signs the team isn't the problem
01:20 Sign 1: every question defaults to you
02:42 Definition of done and the 80% rule
03:36 Sign 2: you've got SOPs and nobody uses them
04:51 The AI bot that answers the team's questions
06:09 Sign 3: you're the only deadline
07:22 Sign 4: you hired and it didn't stick
08:34 Hiring like a funnel and the 30-day onboarding
10:32 Sign 5: you feel like you're repeating yourself
11:02 Delete, delegate, automate and the two-week time audit
11:58 The buyback rate: 25% of your hourly rate
If you're a business owner doing $250k to $2m a year and every question in the business still lands on your desk, book a free Leverage Audit with me. We'll go through your systems and processes, work out what to automate, delegate, or delete so you can get your time back and put those hours into growing. Link's in the description.
Find out how to get 20 hours/week back -https://leveragedceo.com.au/getyourtimeback1
