Now you know that ‘your business isn’t you, that it has a life of it’s own, and can have a completely different shape from the one it now has, you can re-think why it is that you don’t feel able to trust your team.

You may well have assumed it’s because they aren’t as capable as you, or that they don’t care as much as you. You may think you just haven’t been able to recruit the ‘right’ people with the ‘right’ experience.

Actually, it’s just that they don’t know what you do.

You’ve spent years hand-crafting the customer experience that’s made your business successful. And in doing so, you’ve internalised it. For you, it’s second nature. You don’t have to think about it. You just do it.

But your team aren’t you. They haven’t been through that process with you. They don’t know what you know. They may well have other models in their minds as they deal with clients, models learned from their previous experience. Models they’ve had to make up for themselves as newbies to business, and in the absence of enough information from you.

Your problem is not a people problem, it’s a communication problem.

Which makes it much simpler to solve.

All you need to do, is communicate the stuff that’s inside your head, the stuff you know without thinking, in such a way that they can do more than extend your reach, they can stand in your place with clients – they can be ‘the boss’, as well as or better than you.

This is easier to do if you’ve chosen the ‘system for making and keeping promises’ model for your business. Because you don’t have to tell everyone everything, right down to the nth degree of detail.

You can create a map of your system, covering the well-worn routes of how you attract clients, how you serve them, and how you go about continuously improving how you do both of those things.

You can give people a compass, that always shows your True North, for when they get lost.

And then you can confidently let them loose, to guide clients into and through your business terrain. Knowing that while there may be occasional detours, those detours will only add to the client experience. Some may even become new paths.

I say ‘easier’. It’s still a lot of work, which is why the way to do it is in gentle stages, learning by doing.

More on that tomorrow.