What Roles Do You Fulfill In Your Business?
“It often happens that I wake at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up and remember that I am the Pope.” – Pope John Paul XXIII.
I am sure that we can all identify with the above quotation. Business-owners are “chief cooks and bottle washers”. Like people our business also has different roles to fulfill. It is important to know exactly what those roles are, because someone (a person or a team) in our business must take responsibility for this specific aspect, otherwise it is not seen to.
The first step is to list all the roles that you are currently responsible for in your business. Here are a few examples to stimulate your train of thought:
Business-owner
Employer
Marketer
Manager of people
Product Developer
Distributor
Financial Manager
Procurer
Deal Maker
Wealth Creator
IT user
Compliance Manager
Legal Expert
Sales Manager
Trainer/Coach
The second step is to select eight roles that are most appropriate to your business. The third step is to rate your results (how well you perform the role in your business). Allocate a point out of ten for each of the eight roles.
1 = no results
5 = average results
10 = no room for improvement – we are perfect
Now choose one role out of the eight. It does not necessarily need to be the one allocated the lowest mark, but should be the one that can result in the most progress for your business if your performance here improves on this rating. Keep a twelve-month horizon in mind.
This exercise is very useful for allocating responsibilities in a business. It often happens that a business team is under the illusion that “somebody” – usually not them – takes care of marketing, for example. However, if this area of work is scrutinised more closely, they discover that “everyone” is giving inputs, but nobody is actually being held directly responsible for this specific role and function.
This exercise enables you to set targets per chosen role, knowing that it is possible to allocate responsibilities and also that you have not missed out on an important area of work.
The content in this article was provided by Jannie Rossouw, Head: Sanlam Business Market. Sanlam is a diversified financial services group, headquartered in South Africa, operating across a number of selected global markets.
For more information, contact:
Website: https://www.sanlam.co.za/Pages/default.aspx
Tel: 0860 726 526
Contact form: https://www.sanlam.co.za/contact/Pages/default.aspx
