My profession makes me get acquainted with many business owners. They all have different identities, mindsets, and business verticals. The one thing that I reckoned was common to all of them was “lack of time”. The daily hustle of meeting deadlines and delivering the work to the customers & clients makes them deviate from what they should be doing. Thus they just manage to focus on daily problems & urgent tasks.

Are you suffering from the same problem? Is your business a victim to some of the common business “bottlenecks”? You forget differentiating between day and night, give everything you have to make sure your business becomes what you want it to be, yet at the end of the day you realize that everything has gone in vain. If what I just described also describes you, what I am about to tell you might be just what you need to know to make sure your organization grows to reach the heights you always wanted it to grow to.

Let me make it clearer to you. Do you make even the smallest decisions for your company or for your team? Here is why I ask what I ask- if in your organization, more than 20% work cannot be done without you, I am afraid to say that the bottleneck might be YOU, and it is high time to sit back and take stock!
Owners are usually very hands-on in a business. And while there is nothing wrong with it and it is rather usually essential in the early days, it might not be much of a boon when the company grows. The reason? Well, what has brought your business “here” doesn’t really come with the responsibility of taking it “there”!
So what are the red flags to know if you are a bottleneck?

1. Delegation Is the Key!

“The first rule of management is delegation. Don’t try and do everything yourself because you can’t.”  – Anthea Turner

Your inability in delegating your work is the reason why you are not able to get much work done. You are not a leader if you are doing ten things well. You are a leader when you are delegating ten things to different people and keeping a check on execution. If you think you are the best person to do many things, you are making a mistake and choosing chaos over calm. Delegating will help you identify the difference between tasks you should do and those you should not.

So how do you delegate? Different people will tell you different things. Here is the trick that works for me. Delegation for me is a three-step process- giving job responsibilities, stating the expected outcome and targeting a deadline. If you start doing this on a daily basis, you will be astonished at the productivity of your team. In many instances the results will be way better than what they would have been had you done it all by yourself. If that happens you should be proud because you have a team which is ahead of you.

2. And perfection is not, whatsoever

You are a bottleneck if you run after perfection. That simple. We have been taught it all wrong. Perfection is not perfect. Itis an illusion that keeps us caught in a never-ending cycle of unhappiness and disappointment. It will decrease productivity.

If there is something you need to be perfect in, it is in having a lucid target- maybe a date, a time frame so that whatever you wish to accomplish is done in the time frame you wish to have it in.

Still wish to be perfect in something? Alright I will give you something else as well- prioritizing. Prioritize it perfectly- all your to do lists, all the projects you are working on and all your goals.

“If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.”  – Yogi Berra

3. Training is what you need to do in the most extensive manner

When I say training, I do not mean educating team members about the day to day processes. I rather imply educating them in essential aspects like time management, leadership, writing skills. Training should be a regular process in your company. In my company, I invite one expert every month from various fields. My team learns from the experience they share, which I think is the best way to learn and grow. I also encourage my team to take online trainings because I have always believed that learning should never stop and I have taught the same to my team.

Sometimes it is difficult to recognize the problem and it becomes more so if we ourselves are the problem, because our egos make it hard for us to believe that we can be wrong. What is easier is to put the blame on someone else. But we are talking about growth and to be able to grow our industry, we have to grow first. So identify what is acting as a hindrance to your growth and if it is you, isn’t that the best because you can always change?

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”  – Mahatma Gandhi

Only, don’t be a bottleneck.