Larry Janesky's 2nd HVA: Training People to Your Vision

If you’re an owner of a contracting business, your HVAs or High Value Activities – the most important jobs the owner can do – often get pushed to the back burner as day-to-day challenges arise. The second HVA on Larry Janesky’s list, and the one we’ll talk about in this post, is Training People to Your Vision.

This growing list of HVAs, shown above, comes from “Working on Your Business,” a module in The School of Entrepreneurship. The School offers a full range of training and exercises for home services and repair contractors, including those in Larry’s dealer networks.

Why Contractors Don’t Focus on the Right Things

Too often business owners believe there are many other things more important to be working on than their highest value activities. Generally, this is for one of three reasons:

1. The owner or leader doesn’t feel comfortable delegating.
2. They can’t delegate because they haven’t taken the time to train people that could take on the work.
3. HVAs can be difficult. They take the owner out of their comfort zone (which is often doing the familiar day-to-day work of the business).

What’s the Big Deal with HVAs

When an owner is doing HVAs, they’re working ON their business. When an owner is doing Low Value Activities (LVAs), they’re working IN their business. In no way are LVAs not important. LVAs just aren’t important to the leader whose time would be better spent creating the vision and leading the business.

Note: Larry does not list the HVAs and LVAs in any particular order. They are just recognized as 12 of the highest value activities a contractor owner / leader can do.

What If My Contracting Business Is Small?

If your company is small, you may need to be involved in the work. That’s fine. Do the work, but each day make a step toward getting people trained to replace you from the work. That replacement can come in one year, 18 months, or two years, but make sure you are training toward that goal.

Take the Time to Train People to Your Vision

One of the top HVAs an owner can focus on is what Larry calls: “Training People to Your Vision.” What does that mean? Don’t just train people to do the work. Train them to do the work as it aligns with your vision for your contracting business.

What’s Your Vision for Your Contracting Business?

To do this, you need to know what the vision for your company is. Is it “Do what others in your area are doing and hope for great results,” or is it to “Be different by…(your unique focus, strength or perspective)?”

Without training staff to do the work in a way that aligns with your vision, you could have:

• A salesperson that only sells half of the products that differentiate you in the market.
• A super-fast installation crew that doesn’t take time with each customer to achieve the levels of customer satisfaction your vision aspires to.
• A receptionist that doesn’t educate the caller (the lead) on your company’s sales process, especially if your vision is to do it differently.

Make a Plan to Train and Delegate

Ready to move into this HVA and start working ON your business to achieve everything in your vision? Start by creating a worksheet for yourself that will help you take purposeful action toward removing yourself from the day-to-day work of your contracting business.

LVA DELEGATION PLAN

Don’t miss another installment!

Each week we will be posting and emailing one of Larry Janesky’s Top 12 HVAs (and corresponding LVAs) and explaining how and why he recommends each one. Sign up above to get them delivered directly to your inbox.