David Seinker, founder and CEO of The Business Exchange
So what’s to be done? David Seinker, founder and CEO of The Business Exchange, has some practical advice for bosses finding themselves overwhelmed by the minutiae of doing business in lockdown.
1. Hire that right someone to sweat the small (but important) stuff
If you are the CEO of a company, then your focus should be issues of client retention and attracting new business. To ensure that you don’t find yourself office-bound as you juggle the day-to-day operations, the answer lies in hiring the right person to take these extras off your hands. It’s okay to admit that this pandemic has left us all grappling with a ‘new normal’, which comes with a whole set of added responsibilities. An operations manager will have the time to sweat this small, but very important stuff, leaving you free to focus your attention where it’s most needed in these precarious times.
2. Move into a serviced office space
Large corporate companies are increasingly seeing the sense in making the move from company headquarters to serviced office spaces, such as those offered by The Business Exchange, for a variety of different reasons. A primary one is how much you can save on the overall cost of a lease. But more than that, moving into a space like this immediately takes a whole lot of tasks off your hands - like building maintenance, IT services, cleaning services, kitting out your office space and more. It’s a case of plug and play at The Business Exchange, the company will not only retrofit an office space to meet your needs, but it’ll also be sophisticated and meet the high standards that corporations like yours have come to expect. Critically, in this Covid-19 world, serviced office spaces take care of social distancing and sanitisation requirements so you don’t have to.
3. Trust your staff
Bosses often find it difficult to let go of the reins when it comes to managing their staff, especially now that so many people are working from home in the lockdowns. Let’s face it, employees hate to be micromanaged, so you’ll be doing them and yourself a favour if you put your trust in your teams and their managers. If they’re tasked with a project or are expected to produce certain results, you won’t help them do so by checking in at every opportunity. The chances are that you’re adding unnecessary stress on both sides that could even derail their best-laid plans. Let them do their jobs, while you do yours.
4. Share the load
Just because you’re the boss doesn’t mean you always have all the answers - and make sure your staff know that you’re happy to learn from what they have to bring to the table. We can all learn from the experiences of others on the team or, if you’re pretty much a one-person show, from outside advisers who can offer you an unbiased view. Too many bosses fall into that dangerous trap of always keeping up the facade that says they’ve got it all together, all the time. It’s much healthier and more productive to be transparent with trusted team members and advisers. If you share your struggles, your progress to a solution will be much faster and way less stressful. There is indeed truth in the old adage that a problem shared is a problem halved.
