More often than not, when a customer enters a small business establishment, he can readily pick out the harried owner from a multitude of workers and by-standers. 

Stereotypically,  in a mature firm, the owner is the well dressed gentleman or finely groomed lady giving orders and commanding respect.  While a firm just in the infancy stages of development (ranging from a restaurant, salon, retail store to operations providing services, and even  those producing or assembling products); the owner may be the harried worker doing the job least preferred by his hired hands. Or, she is the one taking orders from everyone else.

The Flattened versus the Inverted Pyramid
The flattened pyramid of the 90s were the rave of the day whereby Fortune 500 conglomerates sought to reduce administrative overhead by re-tooling the organizational structure to weed out managers failing to contribute to the bottom or front lines.

The inverted or upside down pyramid on the other hand is a cultural phenomenon that occurs when the President, CEO and owner of a small business handles repetitive, routine, clerical tasks that are best handled by his employees. How do you manage your time and your employees more effectively so that you do not run into this rut?

Solidify the Corporate Structure
Comical job titles, fluid job duties, teambuilding, quality circles and the increased used of cubicles versus separate office space were strategies employed by huge conglomerates in the 90s to bring out the individuality and creativity of rank and file employees.

Small business owners at this time may have used these tactics as models for replication in their own businesses. Regrettably, for many small businesses, one can not take the risk of too much employee individuation when economies of scale and standardization help to reduce costs and increase profits.

Create Processes for Standardizing your Operation
Standardizing repetitive processes that reduce the time needed for employees to think through a routine task greatly increases the effectiveness and efficiencies of each employee. Further, in minimizing the time required to think through the processes for task completion by each individual employee reduces the likelihood that an employee will on his own, draw the wrong conclusion. 

Take the time now to reflect upon the core competencies of your operation. Identify ways in which you might streamline and standardize a proven process to increase financial gains.

Create an Organizational Chart
The first step in controlling your management and discretionary time as well as the time your employees spend ‘on task’ is to create an organizational chart.  Your organizational chart should resemble a pyramid. The pyramid would depict the small business owner or entrepreneur at the pentacle and employees and staff further down the pyramid as their responsibilities diminish.

Draft Job Descriptions and Identify Job Tasks
Drafting job descriptions and identifying corresponding job tasks concretize your operation. While the alignment of task assignments and job descriptions vary from organization to organization, they are helpful in assigning responsibilities and holding the owner and the employee accountable for certain tasks.

Prioritize Each Critical Task
To orient you, the entrepreneur and your employees to specified actions and tasks, it is suggested that the business owner identify the order of priority for each critical task listed on each job description. Another recommendation would be to quantify based upon a 100% scale the time an employee should dedicate his 8 hour day to each group of tasks.

Separate Management Tasks from Vocational Tasks
Now that a job description and corresponding duties have been created, scrutinize them.  Begin to identify the managerial tasks listed on the CEO or president’s job description and those listed for others. 

Make a habit of mentally reviewing your daily ‘To Do’ checklist and highlight any vocational and entry-level tasks you may have completed throughout the day.  A reg-flag should alert you when a majority of your day was spent handling entry-level tasks. A sample of vocational duties follow.

• A CEO re-reading an order to check the accuracy of unit cost and final billing,
• A president proofing the final draft of an annual report for typos,
• A sales vice president taking a repeat order over the phone from a returning customer,
• A manager of a retail store taking inventory in the stock room,
• A president operating the 1 hour photo lab machine.

Set Aside Time for Feedback and Review
To gauge the performance and productivity of every employee, the business owner should routinely meet with each staffer individually to review the job description and corresponding duties.

A checklist to rate employee performance and ‘time on task’ would be used as a point of discussion and a means by which both might access and adapt the job and tasks assigned,  as well as the percentage of time allotted for each critical task.

More importantly though, regular reviews will allow employees to provide valuable input to the owner as to ways in which standardized processes might be improved upon or more creative methods might be introduced to improve efficiencies and quality.

Without solid structure and standardization, the owner would be hard pressed to craft solutions to production, service and administrative demands in this century of rapid modernization.

Dr. Mead, PhD, MBA, MA http://www.ishareknowledge.com/ is a consultant specializing in human behavior, school and social psychology. She can be contacted at: tonya@ishareknowledge.com