Are you micro-managing your team and, in doing so, ensuring your business can’t run without you? 

All business owners, tax specialists included, pour their life and soul into the business and work hard to grow it.

But at a certain point, even though it is hard to let go – and it is your expertise your clients are seeking – it is important to be able to step away from the business and be confident the company can run successfully without you physically present to make every decision and answer every query.

If you do have your hand in every decision, you could well be, as many small business owners are, creating the bottleneck that is holding up your team and making your business less profitable than it could be.

Here are some ideas to think about if you would like your business to be less reliant on you:

1. Probably the first and most important step, as UK-based CVI Capital Group – a company that buys, grows and sells businesses – writes, is to let go of the idea that no-one can do it as well as you can. Just because someone may not do it the same way you do does not mean they won’t achieve the same outcome.

While many business experts say putting detailed processes and procedures in place helps any business, CVI Capital group say rather than focus on the process, it is better to focus on the result. 

“Everyone has their method of thinking and their way of how they see the world. And that means they’ll always approach things in a slightly different way to you.”

2. The next step is to stop micro-managing your team. You need to trust them and empower them to make the right decision without always having to defer to your judgement. 

Perhaps you initially put limits around the decisions they can make without referring it to you until both you and your team feel confident about the decisions that are being made. 

Serial entrepreneur Richard Fertig, writing in Forbes, says he has committed himself to only doing things he wants to do; or that he is uniquely qualified to do.

“Those two things require me to: Create repeatable and scalable support infrastructure to run the daily operations.”

Essentially it seems the crux of your business being less reliant on you is to trust your team. Trust them to make the right decisions. Ask for their input, find out what processes work for them and what don’t. And ask them to help you find a solution (that doesn’t necessarily involve your input.)