Entrepreneurs love paperwork. Not. The truth is that most entrepreneurs hate paperwork with a passion otherwise reserved for the college team that ran up the score on their alma mater year in and year out.
If I want to get a guaranteed laugh in a presentation to business owners, I describe a scene set in their office. You are talking with an employee, sitting behind your 96 inch wide Rosewood desk, admiring the unbroken expanse of its mirror-like finish. That opening doesn’t really lead to any story, because I’ve obviously destroyed any credibility with my fantastic description.
Paperwork is a term we use to describe something we don’t like to do. If you are an engineer, working on a plan isn’t paperwork; it’s engineering. If you are a financial planner, reviewing someone’s portfolio isn’t paperwork; it is planning. So paperwork is different things to different people, but it universally describes something we’d rather not be doing.
As an entrepreneur grows his or her business, paperwork is often the first thing to be delegated. You hire an assistant, or a bookkeeper, or someone to do the invoicing. Your logic is inescapable. The less time you spend on paperwork, the more time there is for generating revenue.
Unfortunately, this antipathy toward repetitive and uninteresting administrative tasks too often extends to documentation that only you can do as the owner of the company. Job descriptions, performance reviews, procedures and business plans become lumped into the general classification of “paperwork.” These are critical tasks that are all too easily postponed indefinitely without doing visible damage to the operation.
There are two reasons for ducking these tasks. The first is a general dislike of spending time on things you don’t do well. There is no pressing need or obvious benefit to carve time out of a busy day to address process issues. No employees are standing idle while awaiting a job description. Your business plan starts with revenue, so time spent on generating revenue is obviously more productive than time spent on deciding what to do with it. You discuss customer service and quality every day, so why would you need to write down a mission, vision, or core values statement?
The second reason, and perhaps the more influential one psychologically, is the entrepreneur’s resistance to putting things in tight little boxes. You didn’t start your own business so that you could run by a rule book. You did it so you could control what happens around you. Documenting how things are to be done commits you, as the owner and leader of your company, to doing them that way. It’s just another box, even if it is one you built yourself.
The first reason, that the effort is unnecessary, is simply wrong. You owe your employees and customers a clear understanding of what to expect, and what the results should be time after time. That comes from your systems. If you don’t accept the responsibility of defining those systems, who will? Look around your business. Who, if not you, is better suited to deciding what people should be doing, and what your company should be delivering to the people who pay you?
The second reason, that the effort confines your freedom to act, is a misunderstanding. You document policies, procedure and plans for other people. Your role in the business doesn’t change. You are still the Chief Innovation Officer. It is your job to continually look for better methods and to generate new ideas. Just because you have documented a way to do something doesn’t freeze experimentation or all future changes. In fact, doing so would be failing your responsibility as an entrepreneur.
