3 Biggest Management Mistakes Made By Entrepreneurs

Management Mistakes

Small Business Mistakes Made by Entrepreneurs

The best part of being an entrepreneur is being your own boss. However, depending on the size of your company, this also means that you are someone else’s boss (or will be soon). Sometimes being the boss isn’t all it’s cracked up to be with all the additional responsibility that comes with that role. It can be a rewarding experience, though, and highly beneficial to your company, if you avoid these three management mistakes.

1. Not paying attention to culture

Entrepreneurs spend so much time getting the business up and running, and being profitable, that they often overlook laying down a lasting company culture. Work culture is important to employees’ job satisfaction and motivation, which means that it will directly influence your turnover rate and long-term hiring costs.

However, work is still work. While some entrepreneurs may hold the reins too tight, others create a free-for-all. It’s great to want to create the best stress-free work environment without set hours or limited vacation days, but remember to balance this out with structure and concrete professional expectations. It’s all about balance.

2. Growing too fast

If you have 50,000 employees, a dozen or so bad hires is not a big deal. However, startups do not have this luxury. It is exciting to create your own business and hire people to help it grow, but hiring unwisely or too quickly will only lead to greater problems, and can cause your business to shutter.

The staff that you hire from the outset is the most important team you will work with. First-round hires are responsible for moving a small business through the initial stages of the business’ development and will ultimately determine the survival rate of your company. After all, eight out of 10 small businesses don’t make it.

3. Not providing feedback

For some reason, entrepreneurs are typically bad at providing feedback to their employees. It may be that after getting out of the rat race, the last thing you want to do is subject others to the rigmarole and are uncomfortable playing the boss role. Other bosses believe that employees should be able to handle everything independently and don’t understand the value of feedback. Either of these situations, however, will not get you very far.

Feedback, either positive or negative, fuels your employees and keeps them focused on the company’s goals. Take an active role in eliminating undesirable work habits and keep an eye on motivation. After all, you are the leader here and in order to lead, you have to teach your employees and indicate the proper path. Lack of feedback only feeds into long-term institutional problems and helps matters escalate until you’re faced with a walk-out.