If you have made a new year’s resolution to lose weight, cut down on the beer (or wine), or something deeper like find your inner karma, I hope you are sticking to it and are not sneaking out to the local burger van, or losing your cool when you hear drivers in the break room moaning about the same inconsequential thing every single day. Sorry, that’s just me!
One resolution I do not need is to be more decisive. If I am good at one thing, it is making decisions. I have always felt that I would rather fail via a decision or opportunity I have taken than bankrupt the business through inaction.
To use a boxing analogy, I would rather go out on my shield, still swinging, than lose on points.
I have made some good choices. After all, we are still trading well. But I have also made some shocking ones. The time I convinced our office team to purchase a boatload of hospitality for golf’s British Open, confident in the fact that we would make an easy killing, is an example. We did not sell a single place. I don’t even like golf.
Fortunately, I am reminded of that mistake every year when someone from the British Open calls, asks for me personally, and tries to give me the hard sell again. I think I have ‘mug’ written against my name. But you live and learn.
But there is one decision I need to take and which I am really struggling with, though. It concerns the management structure. Effectively, we do not have one.
We operate 20-odd vehicles, and every member of staff reports directly to me with nothing in between. That is why I hear all the same moans from drivers every day. Across mechanics and drivers through to administration, it is my responsibility,
Many times, I think I need some sort of management team. We could easily justify it on turnover and profitability, but I cannot build the structure.
Maybe I am a control freak who cannot let anything go and would rather do it how I want it. If it does go wrong, I can then take the blame knowing that it is my issue. I do not see anyone in my current team who I think could step up. I have gently tried it with a couple of them, but with no success.
Short-term, and while I am still youngish, this is fine. It certainly keeps our profitability percentages high, but longer-term, it will mean that the business either dies with me, or when I have had enough, we shut the doors and sell the assets. I imagine that we would be desirable to one of the bigger companies, and I have already been tentatively approached.
But I am just not sure that I can work for anyone else for however long I would have to stay. So for this company to continue when I have had enough, I need to follow my own advice: Make some decisions and get my house in order one way or another. To partially coin a phrase: Take a proverbial or get off the toilet.
