I don't like managing people

I was talking to a prospective client recently about the challenges of growth.  He said he had spent twenty years working 60-70 hours per week growing his business and that he was feeling the strain - and his wife had also started to express concern.

I asked him about delegation and whether he was developing employees to take on more responsibility and reduce his load.  The short answer was no.  The slightly longer answer included the following elements (I paraphrase):

"My company is in town x and there just aren't enough of the right people around."

"If you train employees up they will just want more money or leave."

"I can't afford to pay people more."

"I just don't like managing people."

The final point was made almost at the end of our conversation.  I don't know whether it was a momentary insight or something he knew well but was only prepared to share after we had talked for a while but it probably explains the three previous points.

Of course, most employees, much of the time, are baffling, unpredictable, selfish, short-sighted, lazy - in short, humans.  Managing them is a never-ending challenge that requires a consistent, steady will to prevail,  a resilience that can surmount the inevitable disappointments, and some basic management structures and techniques.  But to become leadership, to transcend management, requires something more.  It requires mutual trust and a belief in the ability of ordinary people to do extraordinary things if they want to.

Business owners, and managers generally, get the employees they think they will get.

The tragedy is that many, perhaps most, business owners end up with employees by accident, as a by-product of growth.  They have little time, desire and perhaps knowledge to develop these people and so low expectations are inevitably met and a nasty downward feedback loop created.

After 20 years of 60-70 hour weeks fnally takes its toll and the business owner decides something must change it can be an unwelcome message to hear that the only sustainable way to grow a business is to grow the people.

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