We help small businesses with technology, strategy, and leadership and have a passion for sharing what we have learned. Subscribe to our newsletter to get helpful weekly content.
The Two-Week Test
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Could your business operate for two weeks without you? That’s a question I’ve been asked and tested on throughout my career and one that has kept coming to mind over the last several weeks as I’ve been working with small business owners. Maybe they took a vacation, got sick, or just decided to take two weeks away from work. Would their business keep running or would important things have to wait until they came back? I’ve started calling this The Two-Week Test and its a tool I’ve used to reduce daily dependence on owners of businesses, processes, and leaders. To do it, consider the following: Imagine you leave work this afternoon and won’t return for two weeks. You won’t be able to answer calls, check email, or make decisions related to work. Reflect on these questions:
These answers can tell you a lot about your business, but they mainly tell you about the dependence it has on you. A business can be profitable and still be highly dependent on the owner because of his or her expertise. The goal isn’t to replace the owner, but to give the owner choices and the business resilience. Try the Two-Week TestWrite down everything that would stop, struggle or wait on you if you left work for two weeks. Find one important thing on the list that should not depend entirely on you and make it a little less dependent on you. That might mean training someone, documenting a process and assigning another champion to it, or giving authority to others to make a decision. Solve one thing and then pick another and watch work become better at supporting the life you want to live. P.S. If the Two-Week Test exposed a few things in your business that depend too much on you, hit reply and tell me what they are. I’d be glad to talk through where I’d start. Perry Myers |
The Outlier Team
We help small businesses with technology, strategy, and leadership and have a passion for sharing what we have learned. Subscribe to our newsletter to get helpful weekly content.
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