There are a number of strategies that you, as a business owner can use to make your business less reliant on you.

Strategies like the development of your internal processes and systems, training your team to ensure the effective use of those systems and processes, training your team to identify problem areas in your business and come to you with suggestions to solve those problems, developing and documenting organisational structure and so on. They will all help in making your business self-sufficient, taking the heavy lifting away from you.

Another important strategy here is accountability. Accountability can be a challenge to build into a business but the investment is well worth the effort.

Accountability comes in different forms and we are going to explore two types here.

The first type is making sure your systems and processes are being used in the way they are designed to be used. We know that many businesses already have good systems and processes in place. Your next challenge will be getting your team members to use them correctly.

This is where accountability is important. By linking accountabilities to your systems and processes, ‘red flags’ will arise when a system is not used correctly. Or at the very least, you would be able to conduct a mini-audit and uncover the level of proper use of your systems and processes. Enough accountability would be built in so that you can identify the ‘non-use’ culprits.

The second type is the use of key measures or key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs can be linked to a team member’s remuneration for the purpose of calculating bonus payments over and above a base salary.

The KPIs can be formulated or linked to key metrics that will drive the performance of your business. For example, KPIs such as client retention rates, average sales value, delivery times, leads generated, client knowledge, average gross profit percentage plus many more.

Your challenge is to tap into your team member's motivations. If you slow the word for motivation down, it is motive-for-action.

By creating motive for action through accountability and reward, everyone gains clarity on what needs to be done, who is responsible for what, where the focus needs to be, and how to do it.

It’s very much like baking a cake or making your favourite dish. You have the recipe, you have your utensils, you have the correct measurements and you have the right timing. A recipe for a great dish, a recipe for business success!