This month, Jim Castiglia, our esteemed business coach writer who assists entrepreneurial business owners, wrote an interesting article that points out something that I have seen in almost two decades of covering the finishing and coating industry.
Most finishing shop owners spend a lot of time “in” their businesses—working the floor, talking with customers, making sure supplies are ordered, and even tracking down lost invoices—but very few seem to have time to work “on” their businesses.
What’s the difference between working in your business and working on it? Jim and many other experts help shop presidents and CEOs sort their way through ownership responsibilities. They say owners who want to be hands-on can often lead them to neglect other aspects of the operations.
For example, some owners just don’t make time to look at the long-term growth of their finishing business or ensure business operations are running as efficiently as possible. This means taking a step back and watching how things move through the plant from arrival to invoicing and even observing how their shop is marketed to the industry or how customers perceive them.
Jim’s article doesn’t go into depth explaining the difference between “on” and “in,” but rather, he presents the idea of properly thinking about your business, which he says is one way to work on your business).
“I’ve never met or worked with a businessperson who didn’t think about their business; they thought about it constantly,” Jim writes. “But that’s not the kind of ‘thinking about your business’ I’m referring to. I mean the kind of deep thinking; planned, structured, ritualistic thinking that applies serious brainpower to the core problems of your organization and their potential solutions.”
Kate Dobson, the head of strategic academic partnerships at the University of Roehampton in the UK, says the key to understanding what it means to " work in” and “work on” a business is that it is not an either/or situation, but rather about learning how to balance the time needed on both.
“You need to have systems in place that will allow you to step away from the day-to-day details and focus on the long-term,” Dobson says. “This could involve delegating tasks to other staff members, outsourcing whenever possible, or utilizing software solutions that automate low-level tasks.”
Some of the best shop owners I know make a deliberate effort to work "on" their company, from looking at staffing and benefits to the way their customers perceive them to working on systems and procedures.
Some who struggle sometimes get preoccupied with finding the next customer and get bogged down in detailed items with orders that they have usually already hired someone to take care of.
It's always a good idea to look back and see your shop from the outside. Better yet, go away for a few days and think of ways to improve your shop's operations. It might be the two to three best days ever in your company’s history.
Tim Pennington is Editor-in-Chief of Finishing and Coating, and has covered the industry since 2010. He has traveled extensively throughout North America visiting shops and production facilities, and meeting those who work in the industry. Tim began his career in the newspaper industry, then wound itself between the sports field with the PGA Tour and marketing and communications firms, and finally back into the publishing world in the finishing and coating sector. If you want to reach Tim, just go 
