Working On Your Business Versus Working In Your Business

In past columns, I’ve stressed the importance of vision and developing a road map for your business, whether written on paper or not. Part of this includes understanding your role in the business and how this will change over time. When starting out, you will be wearing many (if not all) hats in terms of setting up supplier relationships, taking and fulfilling customer orders, answering phone calls, dealing with customer complaints, and much more. How much you continue to be directly involved in many of these tasks depends heavily on your vision of what you want your business to be and how much this requires you to work on the business rather than in it.

A useful way to look at the evolution of your role in your business is through a framework developed by Drs. Alan Filley and Ray Aldag of the University of Wisconsin in the late 70s. They observed that small firms generally fall into one of three organization types: Craft, Promotion, and Administration. In my experience, this framework is very applicable and has helped many entrepreneurs that I have worked with to better understand the relationship between themselves and the direction of their organizations.

This Week’s Column
by Jay Ebben, PhD

Full Story: http://www.inc.com/resources/startup/