Stop Being The Bottleneck

In this episode, Mai explores one of the most common issues she sees when working with business owners: becoming the bottleneck in your own business. From delayed invoicing and cash flow problems to decision fatigue and overwhelmed teams, Mai explains how business owners can unintentionally slow down growth by trying to control every decision and task themselves.

The discussion focuses on recognising the signs that you're the bottleneck, creating systems that allow your team to take ownership, and building a business that can operate successfully without relying on you for every answer.

In this episode, Mai talks about:

• The warning signs that you're becoming the bottleneck in your business
• Why leadership is about making yourself less needed over time
• The importance of decision-making systems for your team
• Mai's 1-3-1 framework for solving problems and encouraging independent thinking
• How to identify and eliminate low-value tasks from your workload
• Understanding the Growth Ladder and where your time should be spent as a business owner
• Why commitment lists are more effective than traditional position descriptions
• The Delegation Ladder and the four steps to delegating successfully
• How documenting systems and processes creates consistency and accountability
• The connection between business systems and business saleability

This episode is a reminder that successful businesses are built on systems, not individuals. The more decisions, knowledge and processes that live only in your head, the harder it becomes for your business to grow. By creating clear systems, empowering your team, and letting go of low-value tasks, you can free yourself to focus on leadership and long-term growth.

If you're feeling stuck in the day-to-day operations of your business and want help improving your systems, processes, and ultimately your profitability, reach out to our team at www.myaccountingadvantage.com.au. You can also submit questions or topic ideas via the Ask Mai link at the top of the show notes.

Learn more about My Accounting Advantage

Disclaimer

The advice contained in this presentation is general in nature only and should not be acted on without first seeking professional advice.

Your personal circumstances have not been taken into account, and you should consider the appropriateness of the advice to your individual needs.

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Shift

Speaker 0:02

Hello and welcome back to the podcast My Accounting Advantage. This week we are changing pace. We've got our wonderful advisor and sometimes therapist, Mai Harris. Welcome back to the program. Thank you, Lee.

When The Owner Blocks Cash Flow

Speaker 0:18

This week we are discussing the bottleneck is you. How to stop being the biggest obstacle in your own business. Come out of your shell and tell us what you were thinking here.

Speaker 1 0:30

Yeah, um, this one is not the typical, you know, tax planning, tax saving podcast session. So it's basically what I have observed over the years. And, you know, I'm advising many businesses. And also I provide, you know, quarterly business review, which is reviewing their, you know, profitability position every quarter, and then providing, you know, advice on how to read their financial data, et cetera, et cetera. A lot of the time, what I'm finding is, you know, the business owners themselves feel that they are under immense pressure from the bottleneck effects. What that is, is basically they're feeling like, you know, they're the only one who makes all the decisions in the business and nothing really moves unless they have to step into the arena and they have to, you know, make every single decision themselves. Or if they actually leave the task to someone else to do it, it's never actually done right, not to their standards. And then they fall back into don't worry about it. I will do it myself. So then what happens? There's just too many things falling on top of each other. And at the end of the day, nothing happens. I have like a lot of not a lot, but some businesses haven't billed for like two months. And they wonder why they have no cash flow. And I actually said, hang on a minute, it doesn't look like you've invoiced for the past two months what's going on, and this is why you're actually having cash flow problems. And she would say, Yeah, I just didn't have time to do the billings. And I'm like, Well, you you're busy doing the work, but you haven't billed, so how do you expect to pay for your expenses? And why don't you get your team member to do it? And she goes, Oh, they just won't do it right. It's very complicated. So that's the mindset. Business owners, you need to step over and get over that hurdle because otherwise you'll go into, you know, insolvency quite quickly because you haven't invoiced.

Leadership Means Being Less Needed

Speaker 2:45

Mai , this is such an international topic. Being a business owner shouldn't stop you from being a business leader. And in leadership, the most important part of leadership is to not be needed anymore.

Speaker 1 3:00

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 3:02

So if I can teach this person to do that, I'm no longer needed to do that myself. When you first start a business, you are the CEO, chief everything officer, because there's only you. But as we know, there's functions to a business, and let's discuss those. There is marketing, there is operations, and then there is administration. And if you could see three faces over those headings of people better than you, now we have a business. Otherwise, you've just got a frustrated, crazy job, you lack communication skills because somebody wants to help, but they weren't trained, they weren't guided, and they didn't have the expectations understood into what that role does. Yeah.

Stop Hiring Without Training Systems

Speaker 3:53

And just hiring people for the sake of hiring people, and I say to people all the time, you should be on a recruitment freeze. They go, What do you mean? Someone starting here doesn't get a fair chance because you've got no time to show them. Yeah. There was no preparation into what the role was, the function, and there's no videos or recordings to listen or watch. Whereas someone can break down on the side of the road, look up how to change a tire on YouTube. Yeah. And that is, and YouTube is the biggest LMS in the world, learning management system. So this question or this topic today, Mai uh of the bottleneck is a leadership issue. And looking at that person in the mirror and saying, What do you need to do to provide the people around you with a better chance in the business?

Speaker 1 4:39

Really is a moment that you need to recognize that you have to get out of your own way. A lot of people go, Oh, okay, hang on a minute. How do I recognize that point? And um, because a lot of people really get stuck in their own way and then look around for the problems, you know, or they go, oh, that's the problem. So I have to hir e someone to solve that problem. No one can solve your problem for you if you haven't recognized that it's actually your own problem. So to solve that problem, you need to replace what you are doing first, and then you can actually free your time to deal with that problem yourself because you are the closest to that problem. But you can't free yourself and you can't hire someone to fix the problem because really someone else that come in, they wouldn't know the core issue in the first place. And then because you yourself don't know what does done looks like, that person probably has no chance of solving that problem for you.

Own The Problem Before You Fix It

Speaker 1 5:52

So the first thing is you need to recognize the three signs.

Decision Bottlenecks And The 1-3-1 Rule

Speaker 1 5:57

You are the bottleneck. So the first sign is uh assess the decisions within the business. If everything stops because you are not making that decision, okay, um, who who's the bottleneck you are? So you need to fix that part by putting the systems of decision making together. And um in in my business, I used to think that because people come and ask me, even, hi Mai, we run out of coffee. And I'm like, Yes.

Speaker 6:33

I wanted to write the book, we're out of milk.

Speaker 1 6:36

I used to I still get that up until last week, until I actually said, that's not my job. You know, so you need to go and tell the practice manager, or um, you know, the practice manager has to put in place a system is is running low um how to alert her. You know what I mean? So uh that's there's a lot of things. And sometimes there well, this was a month ago. They wouldn't even put an order in for, you know, coffee because the coffee that we usually ordered has sold out. And I'm like, um, what's going on here? This system is clearly broken. Um, and they're asking me to select, you know, a new flavor of coffee. And I said, no, I'm not going to do that. So the the important things that I've learned from all of this, you know, um, that we don't have any more milk, we don't have any more coffee, is to um make them, well, not make them, but put in place a decision-making guideline for your team. And I have since done that. So what I've implemented is what I call the one-three-one rule. So I encourage my team member to, you know, every time they face a challenge, um, a challenging um situation or they feel that is a problem to them, they have to think about the three options to solve this problem and then provide me with one recommendation. So I've implemented that um one-three-one rule now to everyone. So what that means is, you know, if someone has, for example, the coffee issue, you know, that it was sold out, I say, okay, what are my three options here for the new flavor of coffee for the for the office? And she'll have to come up with the three flavours. And I said, okay, what is your one recommendation? And she thinks about it and she goes, Oh, it's this. I said, Okay, that sounds good. Go with that. So every single time a staff member comes to me now, I go, All right, what are my three options here? And what have you chosen so far? That way I'm training them to think for themselves. So that's the first sign of, you know, not freeing yourself from becoming a bottleneck.

Speaker 9:12

Very good. What's the next one?

Low-Value Work And The Growth Ladder

Speaker 1 9:14

The next one is you are doing low-value work. A couple of weeks ago, I talked about, you know, the the growth ladder. You start off, you know, your in your business with admin. So everyone has to do admin, and then you go up to the next rung of the ladder as in operation. So you master your the operational department of your business, and then the next one is marketing, the next one is sale, and then once you get past sale, you go up to being a leader, you and in or become an investor in the business. So you need to recognize where you are at on your growth ladder. If you are still doing a lot of admin work, you need to understand that your time is better used in the strategic thinking of the business so that the business can grow. And to tell you the truth, a lot of people only doing admin because they haven't learned to delegate and they haven't put in place the system for those low-value tasks to be done without them.

Speaker 10:27

Mai, this is so important for every business owner listening to this.

Commitment Lists That Clarify Responsibility

Speaker 10:31

In my life of work, I spend a lot of time in recordings. Now, today's podcast is a good example. We're doing a podcast for people to learn something. As a business owner and as a leader, you need people to profit from your knowledge. And the one thing that is really important to identify is what is the commitment, then the task. So, for example, if you and I are in a company together, and one of my commitments is to do the recordings of education for the team members joining us, that's my commitment. Well, then no one should ever ask anyone about that because I'm the person responsible for it and there's no thinking around it. I urge everyone to look at your staff, see their faces, and then below that put down the commitment list, not their position description. That's a work of fiction. But a commitment list is in my in my company, podcasts, Lee will do it. So that's my responsibility. Yeah. And then Robyn, she is doing event management. And I don't go anywhere near it. I have no interest in it, and I never should be asked a question about it because it's not my commitment. But if you get your commitment list right, everything changes.

Speaker 1 11:44

Yeah, no, definitely. Everyone needs to understand their lane and where they are in the business. If you are, you know, the the business leader, and that's what you should aim to be, the leader, because you need to lead the business to become something greater. The success growth is only limited to the leadership themselves and understanding when you actually need to let go. But you can't just drop it and then because that can be really, you know, really bad because uh there's no direction there. So the direction is to decide what you are better at, how you're going to spend your time as a leader to grow your business. And once you decide, that's when you create a system to replace yourself. The first thing is to let the team run the solution or the challenges that they're currently experiencing through their own, their own minds and work through the challenges themselves.

The Delegation Ladder That Actually Works

Speaker 1 12:54

Don't try to step in too early.

Speaker 12:56

This could be purely a delegation issue, but what if people don't know how to delegate? What do you do?

Speaker 1 13:04

Yeah, so what I've found, you know, over the years, like, and I refined this process um in my own business because a lot of people get stuck, you know, um thinking about, yeah, okay, I I recognize now that I'm a bottleneck, but how do I change that? How do I improve the situation that I am the bottleneck? So you need to, number one, accept that you are. So it's not anything else, and you're the only one that can change it because it's your business.

Speaker 13:34

If it's to be, it's up to me.

Speaker 1 13:36

That's correct. And don't think that, oh, if things are not done right, I gotta do it. And well, then you your your business won't grow because you are actually stopping that growth. So the art of stop being the bottleneck is to delegate, but how to delegate well so that you know you're not setting the next person that you delegate to. Well, I'll give you the the framework anyway. The art of delegation is I I call it a delegation ladder. So there are four steps. Number one is to document the standard, number two is demonstrate it once. Number three is accept 70% and coach the gap. And number four, separate identity from task. By doing nothing feels harder than taking action. So you need to follow that framework and start. So what do you do first? Number one, to replace yourself is to document what you are doing. Set the standard and the system that that person has to follow. What does done look like? You know, not just done. It needs to be done well. The next phase is once you have it all documented, or we call it SOP, you might choose to, you know, just record, you know, what you are doing and how to do it. And then you need to demonstrate. So you need to show that person how to do it and explain, you know, the intricate details of what they are doing and um how they can actually do it correctly and meet your, you know, standard. The thing is, not everyone's going to get it all right and do it just like you did. So you need to accept that, you know, people not is not people are not gonna get it perfect. So accept 70%, 80%, and then the 30 to 20% that the that's what I call a gap. But you can coach your way through, but at least 70 to 80% is done for you. So the needle keeps moving and the business keeps moving up rather than it's just all stuck with you and you're not going anywhere fast. You know, separate the identity to task, which means that, you know, they have to commit to it. It's not just the task, it's their responsibility to get this right. If it's just the task, they just tick it off and they don't really give it much thought. But if they own it, they they feel the ownership, well then, you know, if you own something, you're passionate about it, then you're going to do it better than if it's just a task.

Speaker 16:38

Mai this is such an interesting topic today, and I want to bring uh an example that could help our leaders understand this.

Build A Business You Can Sell

Speaker 16:47

For everyone listening to this audio right now, let's say you own a business and you are a business owner, and whatever you do, that is your profession, and no one's as good as you because you know how to do it. But the scenario I'm gonna put on you is I want to buy your business.

Speaker 1 17:03

Yeah.

Speaker 17:03

And I'm prepared to pay price that is way above your expectations. You thought you're gonna get this, and I've come in half a million above that again, and I say, Great, I want to buy it. Sold. Now, I'll buy it under one condition. Yeah. One, you're not gonna be here. So where is the training system for all the people that are gonna be joining me in the future? Because I'm gonna be the new business owner, but can I have the playbook, the audios, the screen videos of how the equipment works and so forth? And you say I don't have any of that. I go, Well, you have nothing. And I can't buy it now because you're the bottleneck. I wish you well, you had a great opportunity, but I think everyone should be preparing their business for sale every day so that someone could come in without you there. Because if it only works with you there, you have nothing. And that's a really harsh reality. And just another coachable tip for everyone everyone should have a podcast done like this about their story of the business, how it started, what your expectations are. Because if someone people think podcasting is for people who are on Apple and famous. Internal audios are one of the most powerful training mechanisms, and you only got to record it once. Yeah. And then everyone who joins, they just listen to that and they understand. And if they don't live up to the commitments and the standard, you have every right to free up their future because it wasn't a fit. But if they didn't get the chance to understand, that's back on the business leader.

Speaker 1 18:38

That's right. No, I totally agree with that. Because I mean, you know, wh why are we building a business? We want it to be a saleable business. Because why? You're putting all that, you know, time and energy and money into it. It's your asset. So you need to protect it. And how to protect it is you number one is to create systems for people to follow and create value. If it's not a repeatable process and not everyone can just come in and, you know, follow your processes, well, then it's all stuck in your head. And without you in the business, the business has no value. And that's where, you know, why people able to sell their businesses for a lot of money is because they have a process in place so that the business can run without them. And yeah, I I can't sort of express any more importance on that. So I think it's it's um goal for every business owner is to aim to have a um saleable business.

Speaker 19:45

Mai, another wonderful week of podcasting. What's your final

Final Review And Next Steps

Speaker 19:49

words?

Speaker 1 19:49

My final word for um this week is have a you know, have a review of your situation. If you're feeling frustrated with your team or with your business and you feel like you're stuck and nothing is moving, it's probably time to assess whether or not you are a bottleneck. And if you needed someone to um assess whether or not your processes are in place, or you need someone to just point out the, you know, um or structure the processes for you, at My Accounting Advantage, we actually do that too. We're not just your typical accountant.

Speaker 20:31

Mai Harris, thank you for joining us, and I'll see you next week.

Speaker 1 20:35

Thank you, Lee. See you next week.