People problems are interpersonal conflicts arising from miscommunication, unmet expectations, and competing goals in personal or professional relationships. These issues manifest as tension, decreased productivity, and emotional strain among individuals working or living together. Root causes include poor listening, unclear boundaries, and unaddressed resentment that compounds over time.
People problems are interpersonal conflicts arising from miscommunication, unmet expectations, and competing goals in personal or professional relationships. These issues manifest as tension, decreased productivity, and emotional strain among individuals working or living together. Root causes include poor listening, unclear boundaries, and unaddressed resentment that compounds over time. The article explores practical strategies for identifying and resolving these common dynamics.
People Problems
Micro businesses face some inherent and common problems that are rarely acknowledged. There are too many to list here, but one of the chief issues is “people problems.”
Forget about the #PeopleProblems hashtags on social media. Yes, some of those are funny and timely but there is a more urgent nature to that topic.
To approach this more rationally, start by defining a “micro business.” For this article, a “Micro Business or MB” is a business that has grown to $1M to $10M in revenue. It has a small team of employees or sub-contractors who deliver its services and products. It has systems and procedures, with some elementary quality assurance, that let it deliver goods and services at an “OK level.”
So what is the problem you ask? The answer is simple: growth and scaling. MB is likely to be agile and adaptive, fast moving and inherently more nimble than its counterparts.
Yet those advantages are usually overshadowed by lack of the ability to grow the bottom line via scaling. There are many factors that contribute to lack of scaling ability however the most obvious reason is people and the respective problems with people: i.e. People Problems. People problems are usually and inherently a natural part of managing people.
Large and enterprise businesses have been dealing with it for many years. That is where you see concepts such as Human Resource Management, Human Capital Management, Knowledge Management, wellness programs, etc. Those are ways large businesses have been trying to deal with people and the inherent people problems.
So what about MB? How does a micro business deal with the same issues without the same resources? Well, it doesn’t or if it does it is on a limited scale with debatable results. Are there exceptions?
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Yes of course there are exceptions. As in anything in business there are those that can and are doing it all successfully. That is where you see those MB’s grow and scale. Yet that is not the norm: it is the exception.
In traditional MB, when they hit those revenue benchmarks, a few things tend to happen. They struggle to add new clients while maintaining the same quality, and they take shortcuts around quality assurance to keep up with the workload. They make rush judgments in hiring, overwork team members, lose track of customer satisfaction, and tune out or minimize internal debates.
The list is longer, but the pattern is clear. They stop being a coherent team and grow into disorganization and chaos (again there are certainly exceptions).
The above can be thought of as “People Problems” and how they relate to an MB. An MB has products and services, it has systems and procedures as well as a track record of being able to successfully service clients. However, it can’t grow past a certain revenue.
So how do you address that? There is no right or wrong answer but rather just preferences.
Some businesses opt to address people problems by hiring contractors so the burden falls on another business entity. Others opt to invest into training and mentorship, yet others bring in short term consultants adhoc to address particular issues. All of those can and will have results however not addressing the fundamental and the underlying cause: inherent human nature.
Of course there isn’t a magic bullet to handle it all either. It needs to be understood that most of those people issues are not “one offs” nor “temporary”. Those are persistent because those issues are human.
This is one situation in which a Chief Operating Officer can help. Whether a business brings in a COO usually depends on the owner’s attitude and the resources available. Business consulting addresses exactly this kind of structural challenge.
Business Owner: this is the biggest issue. Most small business owners do not feel they need someone to handle their daily operations. One familiar objection is “It is my business, and no one can run it like I can.” Another is “It is insulting that you would suggest that you can run my business … I built it from ground up.”
You get the gist of it. It is a combination of the need to be “in charge” and the pain to have to admit that people management does not come naturally. It doesn’t matter if you are managing dozen or a few hundred people the principals stay the same. Team members have to be managed, inspired, motivated and yes …… encouraged.
The need to be “in charge” is equally flawed. It is inherent that the business owner is in charge. The need to be “the boss” and / or “problem solver” only interferes with the actual running of the business.
The average working day can be used to generate business and maintain clients. However, very little time remains for the business owner to attend to daily operational matters. Hence doing so interferes with both and results in meager outcome on both fronts.
Resources: MB has inherently limited resources that need to be strategically deployed to the greatest benefit of the organization. Having a full blown COO is usually not an option. Its cost and work load both would not be justifiable.
So what is the alternative? A eCOO (e Chief Operating Officer) Or Remote COO which would both address the workload and resource expenditure.
This is not an infomercial. Many qualified COOs offer such services, and none of them is claimed to be better than the rest. The point is that this need has not been articulated or acknowledged.
Small business owners have been led to believe that an entrepreneur needs a bookkeeper, an accountant, and a lawyer, yet never an operations person. Nobody serves as an eCOO who attends to daily operational and people issues.
If nothing else this piece should serve as thought provoking fodder for all trying to grow a business.
See also: Fractional Cto Services Do You Need A Cto.
