The aim of reducing this dependency is removing these ropes from your belt. If you have no ropes on your belts anymore then the business is fully independent of you.
Now the trick here is how this takes place. It is essential that these ropes are unclipped from your belt and clipped somewhere else. Otherwise, they simply fall on the ground then eventually you will have to pick it up again, reclip it on your belt and deal with the pull again.
They can be clipped on another person, an external supplier, or even a system or software application. It needs to go somewhere.
If you do not clip ropes properly and fully onto another team member it will fall off their belt and usually, it will rely on you to pick it up again. Does this sound familiar?
Clipping the rope properly means fully hatting the team member which includes a written procedure and/or training video.
For me, this was a hard thing to do. I don’t love doing this and it is not how I would operate normally, but what I learned is that if I wanted to create independence there was no way to do it without making this a standard approach to building my businesses. So I learned over the years that this needs to be part of a habit of operation not just for me, as the business owner, but all team members.
The mistake most entrepreneurs make is to engage team members without doing this, with the inevitable result being frustration, disagreement, and failure. We call this HATTING. So hatting up team members effectively will be key to the level of independence you can develop.
This is a step-by-step process that eventually flattens out when most things have been written up and documented.
The easiest way to do this is to do it as an on-the-job process. Whenever you are doing anything that will be done over and over again is to write it up and codify it as you are doing it. Sure it takes more time to get things done – but then over you will notice that there is less to do as most have been done. What I have found is that this is not an approach many businesses use and most staff and team members do not take the time to write up and document.
Have to approach this like you and everyone in your team is building a training and hatting framework – all the time. There is no other approach that will get the same results as quickly. Bringing people into your business not only adds significant cost – but is unlikely to produce the same practical and real “How to’s” you are looking for.
In my business, it is a standard approach which I see as one of the highest requirements with team members. I can not remember how many times I have said “Write it up!”, “Record it” over the years. This is one of the main reasons my businesses are very systemised and structured and able to operate without me – but also without any other key person.
So doing it on the fly is a key approach. The good thing about technology today is we can do this in many ways. We have found that this can be done in these ways:
- Create audio recordings – which can be used raw in Hatting and/or can be transcribed cost-effectively through the use of a Freelancer. Great for sales call processes.
- Write it up – create HATS and/or procedures. We have formats that we normally use to do this to keep it simple and straightforward
- Create videos – this can be in front of a whiteboard, recording a Zoom call using screen recording platforms such as Loom.