A bookkeeper called me this week with an issue which has arisen in her business. She had been growing her bookkeeping business for many years and trained a small group of great bookkeepers to provide her clients with five star service. She had systems in place which her team were following and her clients were delighted with the service they provided. She had appointed one of her best bookkeepers as her second-in-command who had taken over managing the day-to-day running of her business. In other words, she was successfully implementing her exit strategy and on face-value it seemed to be working.
However, when she stepped in while her second-in-command went on leave, she realized the business wasn’t running as smoothly as she thought. She had lost contact with her precious clients and when she called them to check in she found that there were issues she wasn’t aware of. Because she had abdicated responsibility for running her business there was no one checking up on the team and keeping them in line. Although there wasn’t a problem with the quality of the work, she discovered there were many issues which undermined everything she had worked so hard to develop.
There’s a great E-Myth blog which talks about the issue of delegation vs abdication which you can click here. In it they say “Abdication can lead to disastrous results. Tasks aren't completed properly or at all, you have unhappy customers, missed deadlines, financial problems — all of which you discover well after the fact because you abdicated those tasks...and ran!”
So as you’re growing your bookkeeping business and planning your exit strategy, make sure you stay firmly at the helm steering your precious cargo towards your goals. No one else on your team will do that with the same passion and commitment.
