THE ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES CHART By Kirk J. Hulett

Transcription

1 THE ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES CHART By Kirk J. Hulett The structure of most entrepreneurs businesses happens organically. Issues like who performs what task and who makes this decision versus that decisions are not planned, but instead, just fall into a groove as the work gets done. As the business adds more staff, more clients and more services, the flaws in the organic structure can create people and process problems. This article proposes some techniques to review the structure of your business and ideas on how to re-design the allocation of roles and responsibilities. The primary tool in organizational design is the organizational chart. When working with advisors, I prefer to use the term Roles and Responsibilities (R&R) chart instead of organizational chart. It looks and acts the same as an organization chart, but the name is more descriptive and acceptable to advisors and their staff. The R&R chart lays out all the functions of your business, then assigns staff members to those functions for which they will be responsible. CREATING AN R&R CHART An R&R chart is a group of interconnected boxes linked in a hierarchy. The top box is the leader of the business that is, the person who ultimately is responsible for all the decisions actions and outcomes of the business. Most often, this box is filled by the advisor. The R&R chart has a box for each major function of the business. Major functions to include on your R&R chart are: Marketing & Prospecting Operations & Production Administration Client Services Technology Finance Compliance & Risk Management Executive Leadership Depending on your business model and business emphasis, you may combine some of these functions into one or eliminate a function all together. Each of these distinct functions may have subordinated boxes that represent a grouping of similar functions or responsibilities. For example, you may have a role office manager and the functions of

2 operations, administration, technology and client services are all grouped in subordinated functions under that role. Your chart should represent the way you want your business to look like in the future. What functions will be necessary five years from now? Will you add more business lines? Will you serve a different niche of clients? By drawing your future chart, you can see where you have gaps today and begin planning to fill those gaps as you grow. Review your business plan and see how and where you want to grow and make sure those plans are reflected in your R&R chart. For example, in the future you may need a full time marketing person on staff. That role needs to set out in a separate box on your chart, even if today you or multiple people fill that role. ASSIGNING AND DEFINING ROLES Once your chart is drawn, it is time to assign current staff to the boxes. Basically, if staff performs that function, put their name in that box. You will assign a staff person s name on multiple boxes. You may have multiple staff in one box. And your name will be in multiple boxes as well. Next, create a job description for each of the roles on the chart. Do not combine job descriptions across functions. Having a job description for each box enables you to quickly reorganize responsibilities when you hire someone to fill that specific job description. By the way, a job description is a written document that details the knowledge, skills and abilities required to do a job and the specific tasks performed on the job. The job description will document the following information: The special knowledge, job experience, education, licenses, skills and abilities required to do this job. The job duties and tasks performed on the job on a regular basis. The frequency and importance of those tasks. The software and equipment that is needed to perform job tasks. The independent decisions the person in this position is expected to make. ANALYZING AND RE-DESIGNING THE BUSINESS

3 Once your R&R chart is complete, you can analyze the chart to determine if there are opportunities to re-design your business. The diagnostic questions you should ask yourself are: Do you, the entrepreneur, have too many roles and responsibilities? Which of those responsibilities lead directly to money making activities (e.g. getting and seeing clients) vs. non-revenue generating activities (e.g. administrative work)? If you find that you are not spending your time doing revenue generating tasks, you need to delegate those tasks to staff or hire additional staff to handle those duties. This is the most common inefficiency advisors find when they do this exercise. Does your staff have too many responsibilities assigned to them? Have you given staff sufficient decision authority? There are several possible solutions to an overloaded staff. You can re-assign responsibilities to balance the workload among staff. You can add staff though hiring. You can choose to stop doing certain tasks. Consider what tasks take time but do not really add value to you, your business or your clients. You can outsource tasks. The solution you should not choose is to take on more nonrevenue generating tasks yourself. That will make the problem worse, not better. The same goes for decisions. Often entrepreneurs have too many decisions flowing up to them. Think through what decisions you really, truly have to make. All the other decisions should be made by your staff. Provide them guidelines for making those decisions. For example, give them spending authority of $ to buy supplies or to send flowers to a client in the hospital. Do the roles and responsibilities assigned to your staff match their talents and interests? The second most common a-ha from this exercise, is discovering you have great staff in the wrong roles. A typical scenario is one where the advisor is not satisfied with staff members performance. They ll tell me their marketing person seems unmotivated and is always choosing to dig into the details of planning a seminar instead of getting on the phone and making calls. Then they ll tell me about their administrative assistant who loves to talk to clients but hates to do administrative work and is weak on details. Match your employee s interests and skills to the job. Don t make social-

4 oriented people do task-oriented activities all day and vice versa. The R&R chart can help you see if you have mismatched the responsibilities assigned to a person with their personality. Also, you may consider giving your staff a work style assessment. You can find them on the internet. This will give to insight into their preferred work style, such as if they prefer detail tasks versus working with people and ideas. What role do you need to hire next? What new hire would have the biggest impact on the productivity of my business? What is your five year staffing plan? The R&R chart will illuminate talent gaps that is, a gap between the skills and abilities you need versus the skills abilities present in your business. You can fill the talent gap through adding staff. Of course, this is a financial decision as well. Determine what the financial triggers are for when a new hire makes sense. Remember to include opportunity cost in that financial calculation what is costing you to be doing non-revenue producing tasks. You can also fill talent gaps through outsourcing or by providing current staff with additional training. Training is a great solution for gaps in easily learned skills, such as how to use a software program. Provide a draft copy of the R&R chart and the job descriptions to your staff. Get their feedback on the chart and the job descriptions. They will have perspective and insights you have not considered. Also, having them participate in the process will result in greater buy-in and less resistance when you do make changes to roles and responsibilities. COMMUNICATION This R&R chart and job descriptions are important tools to set expectations and define for the employee the scope of their job. Give a copy of the final version to all the employees. Incorporate the documents into your business plan and office procedures manual. You may also want to consider communicating to your clients a version of the chart that will help them understand who on your staff is best equipped to help them with client service issues and questions. Revisit your chart annually as part of your business planning process. Job descriptions should also be updated annually with input from the people doing the job. Having a well designed organization will prepare you for future growth, increase productivity and reduce duplication and effort. It will help you as the advisor identify tasks that you are doing that you should not be

5 doing. In turn you can use that time to engage in high value activities that will help your business grow. Kirk J. Hulett is a business consultant with expertise in strategy development and execution, human resources and employee compensation and incentives. Kirk s clients include small businesses and sole practitioners in financial services and a variety of fields. He brings over twelve years of experience helping organizations of all sizes to identify effective strategies and build the people infrastructure to implement those strategies.