What Does Working On the Business Mean With a Team?
Once you have a team, most of the on-the-business work arrives as the same few questions reaching your phone. Close one for good each week so nobody has to ask you next time, and the planning hour you keep losing starts to open up.
It's a Saturday morning and you've finally carved out an hour at the kitchen table. Coffee, a fresh notebook, the house quiet. You write one word at the top of the page. Next year, maybe. Or Strategy.
At 9:12 your phone lights up. Someone needs a price on a job that's a little outside the usual. You answer, because it takes thirty seconds and you're the only one who knows. At 9:40 a supplier calls about a delivery you forgot to reschedule, and you spend ten minutes finding the original order. Sometime after ten you're on with a customer who asked for you by name. By noon the notebook still has one word on it, and you tell yourself next weekend will go better.
Most owners I talk to have had some version of that morning. They've read the books and they agree with the idea. When they sit down to do the work, they can't find it, so the day-to-day fills the space the way it always has.
I think the trouble is in how "working on the business" gets described. It usually sounds like big-picture thinking: vision and strategy. That's part of it. But if you have a team of five or fifteen and you're still the person everything runs through, the on-the-business work is much more concrete, and it's already sitting in front of you. It's the stuff that keeps interrupting you.
What did I get wrong about working on the business?
When I was building my own business, I hired helpers and we grew. The strange part was that the more help I added, the less free I got. Money was coming in and I was always on my phone. Little delays that didn't matter when we were small started costing real money. I answered the same questions again and again, and it put real strain on things at home. I kept thinking I needed to blow the whole thing up and start over, and I couldn't, because it was working.
My first try at working on the business was writing everything down. Process documents and how-tos. Nobody read them. The questions kept coming to my phone, because the documents described the work while the business itself stayed the same. I was still the place where decisions got made.
What changed things for me was moving from documenting the business to building systems that sat at the center of it, where I used to be. In practice that meant treating each repeated question as a job to finish, so it would stop needing me.
What does working on the business actually mean?
That price question was on-the-business work showing up in the wrong form. In the business, you answer it. On the business, you make sure nobody has to ask you next time.
So once it's handled, ask why it came to you at all. Each usual reason has its own fix:
- Sometimes nobody else is allowed to decide it, and the fix is writing down what your lead can approve alone and up to what amount.
- Sometimes nobody else knows how, and the fix is recording yourself doing it once so that becomes the training.
- And sometimes the job has no name on it, so everyone assumes it's yours. That fix is putting a name on it.
A useful weekly block looks less like a blank strategy document and more like a list of everything that landed on you that week, sorted by how often it came up. Pick the one at the top. Give it a decision rule, a person who owns it, and a place where someone checks it's working. Then stop. One a week feels slow. Across a quarter that's about a dozen things that used to need you, and your leads will stop walking over to ask.
How do you decide what goes on the list first?
Sort the list so anything touching a quote, a job or an invoice comes first, and work down from the top. If your memory makes the list feel vague, the decision count in how to stop being the bottleneck turns it into numbers.
What bigger work gets room once the questions stop?
Deciding where the business is going next year, and what you're going to say no to on the way. Working with your leads on how to make calls themselves, instead of making the calls for them. Watching a short set of numbers that tell you whether things are on track, so you can stop checking by looking over shoulders.
Next year's plan doesn't get written in the gaps between phone calls.
Most of those numbers belong on a shared scoreboard, which is also what lets a weekly operating meeting run without you.
Why do owners drift back into the day-to-day?
Even after things improve, most owners slide back into the day-to-day at some point. I did. The reasons are pretty human.
Writing the rule takes an hour and pays off next month, so it keeps losing to the next phone call.
Your team also learns fast. If you pick up the phone during your block, they learn the block is open. Nobody is being difficult. They're doing what has always worked.
And the quiet is uncomfortable. When the interruptions slow down, it can feel like you've stopped being useful, and familiar work is the easiest thing to reach for.
What helps most is protecting the block from the team's side as well as your own. Tell them what happens while you're in there: who decides what, and what counts as a real emergency. A private promise to ignore your phone tends to lose by the second week.
One honest caveat. This assumes you have people to hand things to. If you're on your own or have one helper, the on-the-business work right now is mostly hiring well. And if cash is tight this month, deal with cash first. The interruptions will still be there next weekend.
How does the Saturday hour go a couple of months later?
It's 9:12 and your phone is quiet. The odd-job price question still came up this week. Your lead answered it with the rule you wrote, and you only found out Monday when you read the notes.
You have the whole hour to work out what goes under that first word. Two other questions still land on you. They're next on the list.
Frequently asked questions
How much time should I block to work on the business?
Start with one block a week that the team knows about, long enough to finish one item from your list, so an hour or two. Keeping it every week matters more than its length. A regular block that ends with one question handled for good beats an occasional full day that ends with a page of ideas.
What if my team can't cover the questions while I'm in the block?
Then the block has found its first job. Pick the question that came up most, write the rule for it, and tell the team who decides it now. Expect a few weeks of extra questions while people learn the new line, and answer them by pointing back to the rule instead of making the call yourself.
Is working on the business the same as strategic planning?
Planning is part of it, and it comes later. With a team that still routes everything through you, plans written now tend to stall in the first busy week. Clearing the repeat questions first gives a plan somewhere to land, because the people carrying it out can decide without you.
Which question should you close out first?
If you'd like help turning your list of repeat questions into systems your team runs, start here.
