Your friends and family can be your biggest supporters when you own a business. But they can also be obstacles. People who care about you can fail to understand and not respect your work schedule.
They can drop by to hang out at the office when you know you should be working. Or if your office is at home, they can interrupt you several times during the day.
When you have a business, setting boundaries to keep productivity flowing can be an issue. This is why you must set and keep clear-cut boundaries. You have to speak up whenever lines are crossed.
You must treat your business like a business and respect it – or others won’t either. Sometimes people who work in a similar field will show up unexpectedly to talk, and this can temporarily slow you down.
Other times, they come by so often that it becomes an issue. If this is a problem, you’ll have to take control – and it can be as simple as saying, “I’d love to chat, but I have a deadline, so I have to get back to work.”
Employees can create productivity problems when they don’t do their job. When one person fails to do what he’s supposed to do, it can have a trickle down effect. The project could slow down until someone goes back to complete the original task.
Things get missed during a workday or a workweek. Mistakes are inevitable. Repeat mistakes and repeated issues of not completing assignments on time affect your business negatively, slow productivity can cost you in long-term profit.
If you have employees or an outsourced team that slows down your business, they either need retraining or to be replaced with ones willing to do their jobs correctly and on time.
Sometimes, it’s vendors that can slow your productivity. They don’t deliver a product when they’re supposed to, so that can slow down the time a shipment needs to go out or a launch needs to take place.
You can work through this by finding a replacement vendor. If someone makes a commitment to you to have something to you on a certain day by a certain time, that commitment should be kept – otherwise, your business is the one most affected.
Sometimes, in an effort to save money and offer goodwill, business owners hire family members or friends. Working with people that mean a lot to you can be a great opportunity.
Loved ones and friends working toward a common goal can often increase productivity. But if you have a family member or a friend who don’t do what they’re supposed to, it can be a problem.
In order to protect the family or friendship, you might not want to give that person a boot from the business. If that’s the case, move that person to an area where what they’re doing won’t impact the productivity.
Let them answer phones or handle email or do other tasks that help. But don’t be afraid to put your foot down if there’s nowhere else to put them. You’re in charge of turning your business into a success, and you need to adhere to your own responsibilities.