If your shoes pinch, you’ve been wearing them too long

Why waiting until your team is stretched before recruiting could be holding your business back, and what Malcolm Palmer has learnt about building a business that doesn’t depend on him.

If your shoes pinch, you’ve probably been wearing them too long.

Recruitment works in much the same way. Most business owners wait until things start to hurt before they do anything about it. The diary is full, the team is stretched, deadlines are slipping and people are starting to complain. That’s usually when recruitment suddenly becomes a priority.

But by the time you feel the pinch, you’ve probably waited too long.

I’ve always believed there’s a lot to be said for being slightly overstaffed, even if that doesn’t look like the most obvious decision when you’re watching the numbers. Having enough people to deal with the workload, take on new opportunities and give everyone a bit of breathing space can make a significant difference to how a business operates.

It’s one of several lessons I’ve learnt over more than 30 years of building A4G, and something I discussed recently when Mary Enolu invited me onto the Life and Leadership Podcast.

We covered quite a bit of ground, from recruitment and developing people to systems, delegation and knowing when to let go. But there’s a common thread running through all of it: building a business that works without everything having to depend on you.

Slightly overstaffed is a strategy

I know how that sounds. Paying for people before you strictly need them can feel reckless, particularly when you’re looking at the immediate impact on profitability.

But growth doesn’t wait for your recruitment process.

If work arrives and you’ve nobody available to take it on, you have three choices: do it yourself, ask an already stretched team to find the time, or turn the work away. None of those is particularly attractive, and none is necessarily cheap.

A little spare capacity gives you options. It means you can respond when a good opportunity comes along, deal with unexpected workloads and give your team the time to do a good job rather than simply getting through the next deadline.

Of course, there’s a balance. You don’t want people sitting around with nothing to do, and you still need to understand the numbers. But there’s a difference between running an efficient business and running one that’s permanently stretched.

I’ve worked on that basis for much of my time at A4G, and it’s helped us build a business with the capacity to develop and grow.

The question I’d ask other business owners is this: are you recruiting for the business you have today, or the business you’re trying to build?

The decision that helped shape A4G

One of the biggest people decisions I made in the early days of A4G was to part company with a team member who wasn’t happy and move towards bringing in trainees instead.

It wasn’t necessarily the easiest decision, but I believed it was the right one for the future of the business.

We introduced a formal trainee programme in 1995, and those early decisions helped create a pipeline of people who could develop with the firm and eventually take on more senior roles. Looking back, it’s been one of the most important investments we’ve made.

There’s a lesson in that for business owners. Recruitment shouldn’t always be about filling the gap that’s causing you a problem right now. Sometimes you need to look further ahead and think about the people you’ll need in three, five or even ten years.

But developing people isn’t simply about giving everyone the same opportunities and expecting them to follow the same path. One thing I’ve learnt is that you can’t assume everyone is motivated by the same things you are. As an owner, you might be driven by growth and the next challenge, but that’s not necessarily what matters most to everyone in your team.

Understanding what motivates people individually, where they want to go and how they can contribute is a big part of building a strong business.

I also talked to Mary about two experiences from much earlier in my life that have shaped the way I lead today: a conversation with my dad when I was 14, and a teacher who refused to let me coast. Both stayed with me, and they reinforced the importance of having people around you who challenge you to think differently and reach your potential.

If it’s only in your head, you don’t have a business

I wasn’t born a systems person. In fact, it took reading The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber to make me properly think about how important systems are to building a business.

The principle is straightforward. If you want someone else to take responsibility for something, they need to understand how it should be done. You can’t expect people to follow a process that only exists in your head, and you certainly can’t expect the business to operate independently if you’re the only person who knows how everything works.

My approach is simple: do it right yourself first, write down the system, train somebody to follow it and then monitor how they’re getting on.

That order matters. If you document something before you’ve worked out the right way to do it, all you’re doing is writing down a bad habit. Equally, if you train someone and then never check whether the system is working, you won’t know whether the process is delivering what you need.

Delegation isn’t just handing someone a task and hoping for the best. It’s giving them the knowledge, training and authority to take responsibility, then trusting them to get on with it.

And that’s where many business owners struggle. They want to delegate, but find themselves stepping back in whenever someone does something differently. If you keep taking responsibility back, you’ll never give people the opportunity to develop and you’ll remain the person everything depends on.

If the business can only run when you’re in the room, you’ve built yourself a very demanding job.

Which jobs are you still hanging on to?

This is probably the question that makes business owners squirm a little.

Take a look at everything you do during a typical week and split it into two lists: the things that only you can do, and the things that someone else could reasonably take responsibility for.

Then be honest about why the second list is still sitting on your desk.

Quite often, it’s because you enjoy doing those things, you’re used to doing them or you think it’s quicker to do them yourself. I understand that. When you’ve built a business, it’s natural to feel attached to the way things are done, particularly when you’ve been involved in every part of it.

But the question isn’t necessarily what you enjoy doing. It’s whether you’re giving the business the best return on your time.

I go back over how I spend my time each year, looking at where I’m adding value and whether I’m concentrating on the right things. That means making sure I’m spending time on developmental work, such as training, systems and improving the business, rather than gradually drifting back into daily administration.

It’s surprisingly easy to drift. You start by helping someone with a problem, then you take on another task, and before long you’re back doing things you thought you’d delegated.

One of the things I’ve found useful is reviewing our non-chargeable headings annually. It gives me an opportunity to look at where we’re spending time and resources, question whether those activities are still worthwhile and decide where our attention needs to go next.

Being busy isn’t necessarily the same as moving the business forward.

Building a business that works for you

Ultimately, building a business that runs without you isn’t about disappearing or losing interest in what you’ve created. It’s about getting the right people, systems and responsibilities in place so that the business can continue to develop without needing you to make every decision.

For some owners, that means having more time to focus on growth. For others, it’s about reducing the pressure of running the business every day, preparing for succession or eventually creating the opportunity to step away altogether.

Whatever the ambition, the starting point is much the same: being honest about how dependent the business is on you and deciding what needs to change.

At A4G Freedom, we work with business owners to help them build businesses that are less dependent on them, giving them greater choice over what they do next.

Because the real measure of a successful business isn’t how much it needs you. It’s what it can achieve without you having to be involved in everything.

Listen to the full conversation

I really enjoyed chatting with Mary Enolu on the Life and Leadership Podcast. We covered growth mindset, what success means to me, how to scale without losing your head, and how to let go without losing control.

I’d be interested to hear what other business owners think, particularly about the idea of being slightly overstaffed. Is it something you’ve adopted, or do you prefer to recruit only when the need is there?

Listen on Spotify here and watch on YouTube here.

If the conversation raises questions about your own business, get in touch or find out more about A4G Freedom.