If I told you there was a briefcase with $10 million dollars on the other side of your office wall, but to get it you must agree to leave your life’s work and never come back, would you? Boomers will remember the 1959 Saxon White Kessinger poem, “Indispensable Man.” It’s no wonder no one today remembers the values and the message behind the infamous poem.
Today’s business owners make it difficult for themselves with the ‘ego in bloom’ mantra. Whether it’s ego, fear or some self-aggrandized ‘best qualified in the room’, YOU are replaceable…AND you need to be if you want a successful sale of your life’s work. ‘Just follow these simple instructions, and see how they humble your soul.’
Not only do you not need to make it difficult for a successor to replace you, but you also need to facilitate it post haste. The more valuable you are to your business, the less valuable your business will be to the universe of buyers. You’re not only indispensable, but you must also be replaceable.
Many business owners try to make themselves irreplaceable, and some ‘stir up the water galore.’ Making yourself irreplaceable decreases the value of your business, and it also makes it more difficult to find a buyer for your business when it’s time to sell your life’s work.
You are the man with highly specialized or unique skills who leads and operates a successful business. Imagine, if you will, only 1 in 10,000 have a similar, unique combination of skills, knowledge and abilities. How hard do you think it would be to find You 2.0 and persuade person 2.0 to buy or operate your business? Selling your business will be much more challenging if potential buyers are dealing with a small pool of candidates like you, 2.0 and beyond.
Where’s the Rub? Another ancient saying from the game of bowls likely circa 3,000 B.C. in Egypt. Streamline your business, fine tune your processes, re-establish disciplines and reporting mechanisms and make yourself replaceable, now. You will build a business positioned to sell. How do I streamline my business, you ask:
Build, borrow or buy a strong leadership team of core employees
Build systems and disciplines in your business and document your processes
Automate as many processes with technology as possible
‘The moral of this quaint example is to do just the best that you can. Be proud of yourself but remember, there’s no indispensable man.’ These simple, practical and powerful methods of streamlining your business today involve using either human talent or technology. However, don’t make the mistake of trying to rely solely on either people or technology. Use both and build in redundancy. #BuildBetterFaster
