PDCA Residential Forum

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

I started planning my 2007 business plan in the 4th quarter of 2006.  I was thinking about what was important to work on, what I wanted my business to look like, how I could reach my goals for 2007.  But before I start to tell you about that, I have to back up a little and tell you about something I learned from a friend, Kevin Nolan.

Kevin shared with me how he writes a semi-fictional story of how he imagines his life in the next 5 years.  He called it his primary aim.  It included all the things he would like to see, do, and be in his personal and professional life.   I started to do the same thing every year ever since I learned about that.  So with that in mind, I reviewed the last 3 years of my primary aim and the ideals and values within them.  Some of the things that were central to my primary aim were things like time with my family, time spent on helping others, a business that provided opportunity to grow others in their leadership and to grow the business to be valuable without me and my daily influence.   It became clear to me, after identifying the growth and added personnel needed to reach our new 2007 goals, that one of the elements in my business plan was going to be my absence.   

Now, I know that’s not what the natural man would think - to leave for a while and let others take control, make decisions without your input.  It may seem like crazy thinking.  I planned to take the whole month of July off in 2007, then 2 months off in 2008 and 3 months off in 2009.  I wrote it down and started to communicate why I wanted to do this to my key players within my company.   This is not so out-of-the-blue for us at A.Allbright Painting.  I have been developing a culture of leadership by telling them that training others to do what they do will free them up to move into more important leadership roles.   I also told them that while I’m away, I’ll be free to plan our future.   To accomplish this goal, we needed to plan for my absence, things like who will be in charge, what initiatives will they work on, what kind of reports I will receive, etc…  As I was getting ready to do this, some of my managers said, “I don’t think you will be able to stay away for the whole month.”  In other words, you can’t do it.  Honestly, I had my doubts, too.  It’s hard to leave this baby in the hands of others, especially to those who always rely on you to make the big decisions when they come.  

Well, the time came upon us and it was time for me to leave.  It just so happened that we had a lot of things going on at that time and big decisions needed to be made.  The week that I was leaving, we had some big jobs fall out of our schedule un-expectantly, leaving very little work on the books for my crew of 25 (less than 4 days of work scheduled).  We were also interviewing a new full-time salesman and we needed to hire a new position called Resource Manager while we moved our Operation Manager to part-time Salesman and part-time Field Manger.  Lastly, we were set to finish our first high-rise exterior paint project that happened to be our largest single contract in the company’s history.   I left, and I left with all those items on the table for my team.  I had all confidence in the world that they would make great decisions without my input. 

Part of the structure that we put in place was that they would report to me once a week by email all the decisions made.  I can honestly say that I had a new-found excitement to check my email on Friday afternoons.   I found that they made great decisions, the same kind I would have made.  I couldn’t have been more proud of them while reading their reports.   I never emailed them back telling them what decision I thought they should make.  In fact, one of our self-imposed rules was that they could only contact me and ask advice for two things (an unexpected legal matter or serious injury).I thoroughly enjoyed my time off.  Well, the first few days I still had some loose ends to tie up on some large bids that only I could do, and I also had to pack for our two-week family vacation.  We spent a week in San Francisco seeing the sights and then we spent a week on the central coast of California in a rented beach house.   By the end of the first week of vacation, my mind was relaxed and I really forgot about work and focused on other important things in life, like my beautiful wife and two precious boys.  We had a blast just hanging out with very little agendas and timetables to be aware of.  Once my thoughts were free of all the day-to-day operations of the company, I started to clearly think about next year’s goals and plan.  So on the last few days of relaxing and admiring the beautiful Pacific coastline, I started to put my thoughts to paper.  The last week and a half at home, I finished writing my new primary aim, our 2008 business plan and started this article.

Upon my return to the company, I was very impressed with the new sense of confidence in the office.  They felt comfortable in their abilities and in the fact that they didn’t need to bring everything to me for approval.   During my month of the company’s key financial benchmarks did better then budgeted and we were more profitable then expected.  One thing that they did notice is that even though they were able to handle the day-to-day things, they still needed me to be the visionary:  to plan for the future, to give them direction, just what I was working on while I was away.  I was able to share with them my vision for 2008 and the growth and new opportunities before us, and now they believed more than ever that we as a team can get there.

In closing, this experience has been a very positive one.  I’m not saying it’s for everyone or that’s it’s even a good idea, but for us it was right.  I would say that if you desire to do something like this, before you start to communicate this to your team, first write it down in your primary aim, and then build the culture and be patient.

(Josh Abramson is owner of A. Allbright Painting in the North Los Angeles area. This article was taken from the Fall edition of the Painter's Rag, 2007)