Why every business should have an org chart

I'm Baz and my company EchoDek designs software to save small businesses time and money.

I've been working for myself for ten years now. Ten years in August.

Considering how many small businesses fail, I'm somewhat amazed by that. I must be doing something right.

But as we grow, get more customers and have to deal with so many mission-critical systems, it's been getting harder for me to manage.

As I started out with just me, then hired in technicians whose work I would review, I quickly became the bottleneck in everything that happens.

And that is exhausting.

So I drew up an organisation chart.

If I could, what roles would I hire into? What sort of person would I want in each place?

Of course, it was my name in nearly all the boxes.

So I sat down and thought through what I actually do. I drew up weekly, monthly and quarterly checklists for each role. I drew up a sales process across eight steps. I drew up a 12 stage software development process. We're really good at software development, but I'd never written down why we are good at it.

All this means that when I do hire people, I can explain exactly what it is I need them to do. How often they need to do it. And I've reduced the amount of stuff that I need to get involved with.

So that's really helped me in the last few months.