If Only I Could Be In Charge Of This Business

If Only I Could Be In Charge!

I have the advantage of owning some small businesses and at the same time being employed by other small businesses.  In some business models I am employed as their manager, or adviser.  As a manager, I am not the true decision-maker.  As a manager or an adviser I recognize the true limitations to my decision-making responsibilities.  With regards to the major and more critical decisions, as a leadership employee, I am subordinate to the true responsibility for making those deeper business arrangements.  There are advantages to being subordinate, depending upon your bent of personality.  As well as there are challenges with being subordinate.  Both areas of work responsibilities, owner versus employed manager, are different.

I suspect a good many of the readers of this blog are managers or leadership employees.  You are given some form of leadership role in a small business model.  I would like to talk to you for a bit.  You who are employed by a small business model have completely different roles and uniquely difficult work responsibilities to perform.  I know.  I am one of those leadership employees, too.

Great Business Leaders Have An Art!

The "art" of business success is not easily performed as a leadership employee.  Leadership employees have very unique limitations in how they can perform their "art" to business success.  Business success has often times been linked to being the result, or the byproduct of performing fundamental steps well.  To a good extent, this assessment is true.  However, much of the success a business model enjoys will come from the unique "art" that a leader brings to the model.  This is often times more important to success than following proper steps.  Some of the greatest business models often times defy fundamental purity.  The beauty in the "art" of their developments many times supersede their inability to perform fundamental perfections.  This is a truth worth accepting.  Unfortunately, leadership employees do not find easy acceptance for personal methods fashioned within their natural abilities as they try expressing their own unique style or gifts in the "art of business" they try to expose.  Much of their style gets suppressed.  The owner does not always accept the "art" within their leadership methods of operations.  There are clear reasons these limitations exist.

An Artist Can See Flowers Differently!

Artists do not paint the same way.  Artists do not see the same subject from the same angle.  Vision is often times subjective.  An end product that delivers success does not always come from a completely understood view.  Leadership employees do not have a clear run to the canvas of success they are trying to paint.  The owner has a separate and different view...most always.  As an owner, I have no challenge with that type of perspective.  As an owner, it is usually my wallet on the table.  My leadership employees forget that trick sometimes.  In many ways, this simple perspective becomes one of the great advantages to becoming a great employee!  It is at this point a leadership employee begins the valuable work to produce new revenues well above what it may cost an organization to employ them.  When this becomes first and front on the mind of a leadership employee, they can begin their work to help their employer to win.  Although given this perspective, owners do not always recognize the value of this type of employment approach and not always will they cut that leadership employee loose and allow them free reign.  If you are a leadership employee, accept this truth and go do your great work anyway.

If you are an employee with a gob of responsibility and accountability, always remember this truth.  You will never be given free reign.  You need to pony up your own bucks and risks to acquire that role.  Learn how to work the parts of your canvas your owner permits you to play about.  Accept these truths and work to develop your own style where it is permissible.  Pay your way more than what your income produces and cover your risks with respect.  Let your frustrations be minimal and appreciate the leap frog effect your position and work has allowed to the life of your own home and wallet.  Trust me, it is a very nice benefit you will never become familiar with until you have a tax man standing at your door with a warrant for your property seizure.  I speak from a position of knowledge on that one.  That was a time I wished I was an employee.

Who's Wallet Is On The Table?

Be a good manager.  Search out ways to improve.  Treat it as your own, but also remember to treat as an ownership risk acquired by your boss, not you.  Ask yourself this question, "Who's gig is it?"  That should bring you back to reality and now you can finish becoming the great leader you were meant to become.

Go ahead and paint.  Just be aware of how much canvas you are allowed to use.  It is not always about what recognition you are lacking.  It is not always about how the owner misses the little nuances that could benefit the whole.  It is not always about how well anybody sings, paints or arranges.  Focus on becoming as good as your environment permits.  You are getting first hand experience with a gathered wealth of knowledge that can be very useful in your career, at no master risk.  That is a pretty good deal.  The most difficult instrument to play is second fiddle.  Make good music anyway.

Until next time....