Should You Work Here?

The company owner is its main salesman. He personally handles all of the major accounts – even when he is on vacation with his family. The owner has his hands in every inch of the business. In a recent twenty minute span he was out in the parking lot by the service trucks yelling at a technician for his dirty van, back in the warehouse screaming because he couldn’t find a component in the staging area for an upcoming job, by the dispatcher asking where Don is and making a pit stop by Michele’s desk to check on a receivable. The owner routinely takes on work that is beyond the capability of the technicians and installation work when the company employs no installers. Yes, he’s even been out in the field installing a job himself.

The company described above needs a focused product to sell, smart business systems and competent people to make the company go.

As a hard working technician who wants to professionally develop on board a ship with a destination, how do you know whether or not your owner is capable? Or, if you are trying to hook up with a company to get you there, how will you be able to recognize a competent captain?

Read Built to Sell. This is an easy to read story about a business owner who desperately wants to sell his business and enjoy his family and life. To help envision what sort of shape his business is in think: 1973 Ford Pinto for sale. Proceeds to finance my daughter’s education at Harvard. What does Aerosmith say? Dream on, dream on, dream on.

While this is a work of fiction, it is an example of real life businesses and their often misguided owners. The business owner gets a family friend to help him turn his company around and make it into a desirable and sellable company.

The process in which this company turns around is the map you need to help identify a competent company to work for. The author, John Warrillow, weaves this process into eight steps. While some of the steps will not pertain directly to your quest, the ones that do are enough. Here are the first five:

1. Create a Standard Service Offering. This means selling a service that your company is really good at.
2. Create a Positive Cash Flow Cycle. You’ll hear it on the street if the owner doesn’t have positive cash flow. “Sorry Bob, XYZ Mechanical is three months behind payment. You’ll have to get a check if you want this item today.”
3. Hire a Sales Team. John recommends at least two salesmen. Competition upholds a healthy atmosphere. Consider it a humongous red flag if the owner is the company salesman.
4. Stop Accepting Other Projects. This one might be the key. Your company needs to do what it is wired to do. If you are trying to perform work you are incapable of, everyone suffers.
5. Launch a Long-Term Incentive Plan for Managers. This is a very cool one. You need your manager to be engaged and relatively happy at what he is doing (remember he is your career’s primary ally).

Items six, seven and eight are not really relative to your mission.

For the most part, owners are sincere people who want to do right by their family, self and you, their team member. To be brutally real however, many are not cut out for this role. This doesn’t mean that you disrespect them, make fun of them and talk about them behind their back. It simply means that you shouldn’t be working for them.

Pick up a copy of John’s book today and get yourself on a ship with a destination that helps your family, personal development and career.