Recently, we’ve been seeing a higher demand for blog posts on advice for business owners and entrepreneurs. So, Workwolf Marketing Consultant Lara Kremer has been meeting with some very influential business owners and entrepreneurs alike to ask them what their biggest challenges were and how they overcame them. One such meeting was with Yoon Cannon, a business growth coach and three-time successful business founder, who herself works daily to support entrepreneurs who aim for the kind of success Cannon has found. And of the most common challenges Cannon has learned founders and businesspeople face, the bottleneck effect is one that comes up time and again. Specifically, many of her clients note that they themselves are unintentionally causing a bottleneck effect in their workflow, since no one quite has the skill or knowledge that they have. So, are you, too, causing this bottleneck in your business?
Cannon offer us her advice on the matter, along with more solutions for the other challenges business owners face time and again below.
The Most Common Challenges Business Owners Face
Now, the owner and business consultant extraordinaire with Paramount Business Coach, Cannon helps founders and business people scale their businesses in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area. Having started and sold three other successful businesses since 1992, Cannon has a lot of knowledge and experience to share with others also looking to find such success.
“It’s lonely being an entrepreneur, being by yourself,” Cannon says. “There are not a lot of community groups out there that are designed to help other entrepreneurs.” So, Cannon, herself, wanted to be that community. And in doing so, she has found some very common problems business owners face.
These, she notes, include what she calls the bottleneck effect—a kind of funnelling that prevents optimal productivity.
These bottlenecks usually happen, as Cannon notes, at processes that rely heavily on one or a very limited few whose expertise drive certain processes. And, unfortunately, this is not a unique experience. Countless founders and business owners face this issue mostly because, as Cannon recognizes, it’s not always easy to break down and teach processes that are quite natural or come easily to them.
Instead, these owners and CEOs (often called the “chief everything officer“) try to wear all the proverbial hats in their organization. But, of course, there’s only so much one or two people can do on their own without support from an internal or external team.
This, Cannon notes, is where she notices the bottleneck effect happening—a kind of funnelling that prevents optimal productivity.
Are You the Bottleneck in Your Business?
As Cannon notes, there are two main causes for bottleneck effects in business, especially when the CEO is wearing the many hats they are want to wear. These bottlenecks are mostly caused from:
1. Not having sufficient staff members for the amount of workload the company takes on, and
2. Not having an efficient enough process that has already been tested and put in place for long-term success.
But, of course, when starting a business, resources can be tight, so the temptation to take all the tasks on yourself is high. So, if you aren’t able to, like Cannon did with one of her businesses, hire a team of 30 before demand becomes too high for your organization to manage, Cannon instead suggests looking to outsource.
That is, of course, depending on your organization’s needs, goals, and abilities, Cannon suggests hiring an external team to help with individual projects at a time.
Of course, with certain processes still requiring your oversight and approval, however, this can still to an extent cause a bottleneck effect. As such, Cannon continues to say that putting in place a system that automates or at least regulates certain work processes.
This will cut down on the amount of work that involve the business owners/founders. And this, Cannon notes, is key for both preventing the bottleneck effect and ensuring the organization can run smoothly without constant supervision or overhead.
Summary
Photo courtesy of Yoon Cannon.
As business consultant at Paramount Business Coach Yoon Cannon notes, the bottleneck effect is one of the most common challenges businesses face. That is, the bottleneck effect is that which hinders productivity due to over-reliance on one or a few individuals. To address this, Cannon recommends outsourcing tasks where possible and implementing a reliable process (ideally, one that involves automated processes) to prevent bottlenecks and ensure smooth business operations
Special thanks to Yoon Cannon for the expert advice in this blog post. If you’re looking for a business coach to prevent the bottleneck effect in your organization, look no further than the Paramount Business Coach website. Feel free to connect with Yoon Cannon there or via her LinkedIn page.
If you have expert advice you’d like to offer us and be featured in a blog post like this one, let us know! Leave a comment on our latest LinkedIn post letting us know what expert advice you have to share.
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