Q. What is one bad management practice nearly all entrepreneurs are guilty of at one point?
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1. Looking for “clones” to hire
As entrepreneurs who were once solo-preneurs know, when you hire someone to take over the work you were once doing yourself, it can be difficult not to jump in and say, “I did it this way” on occasion. It’s important to hire people who know more than you and can look for new, innovative ways to solve problems that you may not think of instead of training new hires to think and act like a mini you. – Brittany Hodak, ZinePak
When you have a startup, it becomes your baby. One thing most entrepreneurs are guilty of at some point is trying to micromanage everything because of some mistrust. That does nothing but cause stress. It’s important to hire a team you trust and learn to let go. When you have a great team, great things happen. There is no need to micromanage. – Parker Powers, Millionaire Network
As an entrepreneur, you naturally focus on sales and your offering, and tend to treat others based on their present value to those two areas without realizing how those people contribute to your long-term success in multiple ways. Not many businesses can be created by one person, and a team that doesn’t feel valued doesn’t stick around. – Emily Holdman, PeopleKit
As a driven entrepreneur, many of us have the “if I don’t do it, it will never get done” mentality. Often we are guilty of doing a person’s job for them and calling it managing. Give your team authority to make decisions and act. Let them actually do their job. Don’t micromanage. The worst thing you can do is hire somebody and then not let them work to their full potential. – Matt Shoup, MattShoup.com
We all have finite time and resources and must be selective in how we apply these. As entrepreneurs, especially early on, we all want revenue and will chase almost anything that has a hint of it — even if it is nowhere near our strategy/strengths. It’s hard to say no to revenue, but entrepreneurs must focus on strategic opportunities that provide revenue and growth to succeed. – Tim McHugh, Saddleback Educational
Entrepreneurs tend to be more confident in their own abilities and approaches than the rest, simply because most of us have found success with our own visions. So naturally, we can be stuck in our own heads from time to time. This doesn’t necessarily translate well when managing others, because sometimes we only want others to see the world through our own lens, rather than be open to fresh approaches. – Steven Le Vine, grapevine pr
Everyone loves to come up with great ideas. But ideas are worth nothing. Execution is everything. Investors say this about business ideas, but even once the business is up and running I’ve seen companies ideate and change too much rather then executing extremely well on core competencies. Sometimes they even have a hard time identifying what the core competency or mission is. – Carlo Cisco, SELECT
When growing a small business, times are tough and resources are scarce, including employees. Some entrepreneurs are faced with having to place certain key players in different roles in order to keep the machine running. Unfortunately, these new roles may be foreign or exactly not what they expected. – George Mavromaras, Mavro Inc. | Praetor Global LLC.
Everyone obsesses about hiring the right team but few follow it up with setting up the right HR policies and paperwork. IP assignment, NDA, paid time off and other documents are often neglected and lead to law suits or expense cleanups. – Ashish Rangnekar, BenchPrep
Successful entrepreneurs are typically high performing people. Therefore, they are prone to take on many tasks because they get things done. Not delegating both routine tasks and the authority to carry out those tasks to others is a mistake. Don’t end up getting stuck doing non-critical tasks that take away from efforts that will contribute to the success of the company. – Mark Cenicola, BannerView.com
When there are a million things to do, it is frequently all too easy to ignore the festering problems caused by bad hires. Few people like being the bad guy, and so entrepreneurs often put off dealing with issues that really do need immediate attention. Bad hires are a cancer inside your business. Dealing with them quickly and directly will always yield better results than putting it off. – Seth Talbott, CEO and startup adviser