A Simple Business Owner job description

As the Business Owner do you have a job description (simple or otherwise) or to put it more formally a ‘Roles & Responsibilities’ document?

I come across many Business Owners who don’t have one; with lots of (sometimes legitimate) reasons why they don’t. But you should do.

Think about it; you recruit staff and you give each one of them a ‘Roles & Responsibilities’ document. And why do you do that? In a simple sentence it’s usually to ensure that the person is doing what they should be doing (and often to what standards). It’s how you hold them responsible and how you measure their success, or otherwise, in the role.

So if that’s the case, why haven’t you, as the Business Owner, got a R&R document, again to hold YOU responsible and how you measure YOUR success, or otherwise, in the role as the Business Owner?

3 reasons why a Business Owner should have a job description

Here’s three reasons why, as a Business Owner, you should have a job description;

1) To ensure you are doing what you should be doing
2) To ensure you aren’t doing what you shouldn’t be doing
3) To ensure that you aren’t stepping on people’s toes and doing what other people should be doing

As a Business Owner, as your company grows, it’s far too easy to slip into, or more likely continue to be, doing points two and three above.

The importance of R&R document was highlighted to me when I recruited my Second-in-Command because it meant my role as the Business Owner had to be clarified.

How do you write a Simple Business Owner job description?

So how do you write a Simple Business Owner job description?

This is how I wrote my simple Business Owner job description (and of course this is relevant to all of your employees’ job descriptions as well). It’s a three step process, and at the end of it you should end up with a clear, concise and most importantly, useful document.

Step 1 – The first question to ask is ‘What is the purpose of the role?’ ‘Why does that person come in to work every day?’ ‘Why are they here?’

The answer to this question of PURPOSE should be one sentence only.

Below are real examples from my previous team;

Website Manager – ‘To be responsible for the design, build, maintenance and development of the website‘

Marketing Exec – ‘To manage the successful execution of the agreed marketing strategy across all products & services‘

SEO Manager – ‘To develop and implement the company’s SEO strategy across all websites‘

Sales & Advertising Manager – ‘to sell, manage and report on the sale of advertising positions across all websites‘

The more senior the role, it may be that the purpose description gets a bit longer.

This was the ‘purpose’ for my Commercial Director ‘To maximise the on-going revenue and profitability of the company and to develop and improve the team and the business as a whole, to agreed targets.’

It may take you some time to hone each role’s purpose this to an acceptable and agreeable single line. But the more time you spend honing this, the more single-minded and clear, and useful, it becomes.

Step 2 – The second step is to identify three, or a maximum of four, areas of responsibility for that role. Ask the question ‘What are the key areas that this person is responsible for?’ List them, with maybe a one line of explanation. This might be three specific tasks, or it may be three areas or departments of the business. Again, you may need some time to really focus and develop this step to ensure it’s accurate and clear. Additionally, if you are doing this exercise for all roles across the business, it allows you ensure that no areas of responsibility ‘fall through the cracks’ between roles.

For two of the above roles, here’s how we did it;

For the Sales & Advertising Manager;

a) Sell it (Sales) – Based on my targets, responsible for selling advertising space at the best possible agreed rates.
b) Upload it (Advertising Management) – Schedule supplied advertising creative & copy from clients on the website admin platforms.
c) Report it (Reporting and analysis) – Performance reporting on ad clicks out from sites, including analysis and suggestions on improvements.

For the Commercial Manager;

a) Advertising sales and account management
b) Team management and development
c) Business strategy management

Step 3 – The final step, and this is a step that in some instances we didn’t do. List specific tasks that are the responsibility of the role. By listing specific tasks in a Roles and Responsibilities document, this gives you and the job holder a ‘checklist’ to work with. However if the person is delivering on the three areas of responsibility (step 2), then how they achieve that is, to a degree, irrelevant. Whether to add step 3 in part depends on how much freedom (see my discussion on delegation) you are willing to give employees to deliver on their areas of responsibilities.

Summary

So in summary we have;
Step 1 – Purpose
Step 2 – Areas of Responsibility
Step 3 – Tasks

A Business Owner job description

So what does this exercise look like for a Business Owner?

Let’s go back over the first two questions;

Step 1 – ‘What is the purpose of the role?’ For my role as Business Owner this was;

‘To be responsible for the direction, growth, stability and operation of the business‘

Step 2 – ‘What are the key areas that this person is responsible for? For me this distilled down to;
a) Formulating company’s long-term strategy
b) Ensuring adequate resource to deliver the agreed strategy
c) Overall financial control
d) Managing, motivating and developing the Commercial Director (my No 2)

And the key…. Nothing else !

For my Roles and Responsibilities as a Business Owner I didn’t have to do step 3 (listing tasks) as I knew what the above covered.

One of the key things that you can now see is that there are areas that I clearly should NOT be doing, because they are not my responsibility. If I end up doing ‘other stuff’ it means I’m not doing the things I really should be doing. And by not ‘sticking only to my role I am letting the company down and I’m not serving my team to the best of my ability.

The problem

The problem that you will now encounter is ensuring that you stick to these responsibilities. From my own experiences, my clients’ experiences and the entrepreneurial nature of all Business Owners, we simply can’t help ourselves…. Getting involved in stuff we shouldn’t!

The solution

So what’s the solution? You either need to pro-actively regularly check on yourself that you’re doing your role as per the document and only your roles. It is difficult to be objective and reliable with this. Or you can get an ‘Accountability Partner’, either internal or external, to monitor you to make sure you are doing what you should be doing (and also perhaps to what levels), and only what you should be doing, not the things that you shouldn’t.

Obviously this is a role that I can perform for you (email me for details), but there are many other people that you will be able to find in your network who can perform this for you.

Two final points

Two final points to consider when finalising the Roles & Responsibilities documents for your staff.

Obviously, you will discuss them with each individual team member first rather than simply chucking a printed document at them. When discussing their roles and responsibilities, be open to them suggesting ideas back to you as to what they should or shouldn’t be responsible for. They may be able to word it better than you. They may also, not have a clear view of what it is that they are supposed to be doing. Such a discussion will clear this up.

Secondly, you may wish to (and I strongly recommend this) to personalise how you write the sentences. ‘I am responsible for…’ rather than ‘To be responsible for…’ is much more personal, is active rather than passive, and gives the individual personal responsibility and ownership of the role, which will hopefully ensure they do their task to a better level.

This works with your Business Owner job description too. Using my own example, how much empowerment and ownership does this give YOU as a Business Owner….

‘I (ME) am responsible for the direction, growth, stability and operation of the business‘

Please let me know what you think about these process for creating a simple Business Owners job description. Anything you’d add? And any feedback/comments etc about the above would be more than welcome.

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WHAT NEXT?

If you found this of interest or of use you can see and hear more of my discussions, interviews and webinar appearances here.

If you’d like to discuss how I could help you regarding the above, or you feel you need a Accountability Partner, then please give me a call, drop me an email or connect with me on LinkedIn. Details below. However, you might find a peer-to-peer business mentoring group is better for you.

I’ll be happy to have chat with you to explore how I may be able to help you. I’ll be honest and I may not be able to help you myself and in that scenario I’ll try and point you in the right direction.

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