Hello everybody
It's Jen here from May Dynamics, coming to you today with a really quick and informal live video
It's about another of the survival strategies that we've been thinking about recently.
Today, it's all about segregation of duties
This is a really important - relatively simple - thing to think about
It's impossible for a sole trader who's genuinely going alone and doing everything him or herself
but it is possible for everybody else, from the smallest companies upwards.
Garry and I - that is May Dynamics and Dynamic Krav Maga - are a good example of how this can work.
Over the last month or so
Garry's basically taken on full responsibility for May Dynamics and some client engagements up in the Pilbara.
We've been working really hard on transformational change on a short-term basis
Him doing that has meant I've been focused on everything else, including looking after our family and
Getting a daughter through an operation yesterday, as well as homeschooling during lock-down.
I think if we'd tried to handle things the normal way during this time - with both of us  splitting our time
between home, family and our three businesses
We wouldn't have succeeded in doing the things have achieved. Because I've been able to focus on family
we've had happy children. Because he's been able to focus 100% on business, we've had a successful
up-swing in business during this time.
I wanted to quickly touch on a couple of the ways that you could look at segregating your duties
Basically splitting up the task load in order to strengthen your business. This might be long or short term
There are various things you can do
First is understanding performance issues
One of the reasons you would do this is to
understand accountability. Often business owners complain somebody's awful.
They don't know what they're doing. They're not really very engaged
A good way to test whether the problem is the training, instructions or resources provided
or whether it actually IS the down to the individual, is to ask somebody else to do that work for a while.
Ideally, not the business owner as they have their own ideas on how things should be done,
It should be somebody at a pier level of the person who is originally responsible for that work
And they should be asked to come in and do those duties. If they're unable to it's a really strong
Indication that it's not the individual who's at fault.
But more likely the lack of training, information, or resources provided to that person.
If this is proved, then something can be done about it
Equally if you have an end-to-end process, it's a good idea -  even in a micro business
To divide that up so that there are handovers. Actually deliberately build
handovers into the process. The reason that's a good idea is because
it forces each point along the journey to have gates, requiring a Yes or No.
Has it passed or has it not passed? If it hasn't it shouldn't get through to the next stage.
One good example is a small company - even a sole trader - who employs either a bookkeeper or an accountant or
potentially somebody like a virtual assistant or virtual receptionist
To do part of their work for them.
The owner is able to focus on the things they need to do, then hand things over to the outside help that they've hired.
And if that involves a broken process, it will very very quickly come to the fore
But it's a really good way of testing.
A third way is just trying to work together.
We often tend to get stuck in a rut after we set up in business,
Owners have an idea of what they would like to be doing with their time, but it's not actually always what they should be
doing with their time. It might be based on old comfort zones,  previous experience
or personal preference": "I've always wanted to be a ___ ___". How would I go doing that?"
But sometimes it's not the right thing. So maybe it's time to go back to the drawing board,
divide up all the activities that you do on a daily basis and actually mix them up a little bit.
See if you can't divide them up in a better way
Doing that can really help you identify a new strategy for your business.
It can actually help you re structure your business as well, because you will
probably find that you may be in a bit of a rut around the structure of your
organization based on what individuals are doing . Sometimes it's a really good idea to take a step back,
Think about what you personally do in your business and whether it's a good idea or not
So, Segregation of Duties.
Three different strategies that you can try
To see how mixing it up could add some amazing efficiency to your business and
start getting you the better results you are looking for.
