When You’re Busy Enough To Need A Clone

Most small construction and remodeling companies start out small and grow as need demands. The first place to add employees will generally be in the field, since your field people actually make you money, while office staff is all overhead. But at a certain point, you will need to consider adding office staff. If you’re like many builders or remodelers, you have been acting as office manager, project manager, estimator, carpenter, customer service rep, bookkeeper, and salesman. As a business grows, it keeps these same tasks (though on a larger scale), and may add new ones (such as promotion or more complex benefits program). Nobody can do all of this; it just takes some people longer than others to recognize or admit it! A division must be made between those functions you will continue to perform and those that you delegate to the new hire.

I have observed that there’s a real tendency to believe that the best hire you could make would be a clone of yourself. After all, somebody possessing all your skills could pinch hit where necessary, would require little training, and would double your own effectiveness, right? Wrong.

Your clone will possess all your strengths and all your weaknesses. If you are great at sales but stink at paperwork, why on earth would you hire somebody else who is great at sales and stinks at paperwork? Salespeople (forgive the generality) are usually outgoing, gregarious, creative, daring, and assertive. Good bookkeepers, on the other hand, well…usually aren’t. You may find while interviewing that you are drawn to people like yourself. This is natural. However, keep in mind that you want to hire people who will be effective employees in the role for which they are hired, not necessarily somebody you want to kick back with on the weekend. So think hard about what tasks your new hire will be asked to perform, and take into account the applicants’ personality traits, stated task preferences, and demonstrated skills. Don’t assume that you have to hang onto running payroll because it’s so loathsome that you couldn’t possibly delegate it to anybody else. Out there is somebody who would jump at the chance to do payroll, or filing, or those other things you’re not suited to of for which your talents overqualify you.

One word of warning, however. Before you can assign to another person a task that you perform, you must go through the process of identifying and then documenting what it is that you do. Without a documented procedure for doing whatever it is you hope to pass off, the recipient is doomed to disappoint you. Documented procedures allow you to fast-track training a new person, and the written procedures can become part of a total procedural manual for all aspects of the company. This adds value to your business, which will no longer be dependent upon YOU in order for things to happen.

It’s just a matter of focusing on the needs of the business, and hiring somebody who will complement rather than duplicate your own skills.