When you first started your business you were responsible for every task that needed doing. Answer phones, write invoices, pay bills, make sales calls, meet vendors, deliver products, and everthing else. You were a one man show and knew how to do it all. You knew your business inside and out and could answer just about any question.

Now your business is starting to grow though and you're finding that you just can't do it all. So you've gone ahead with your next big step. You've hired your first employees. And they've begun to take some of the workload off your shoulders. You can finally take a deep breath and relax a little bit.

Well not exactly. You see when you hired that first employee, say it was an office assistant, well you gave up that title and took on a new one, manager! And as a manager you now have to teach that job and the way you want it done to that new employee. Well let's go ahead and say you've already done exactly that. Now we get to the point about what being left in the dark means.

I've always believed in knowing how to do the jobs of the people that work for me. Even when I had over twenty employees I still needed to know how to do the jobs of each and every one of them. Why? Well the most basic answer is that they just don't show up for work one day. But it really goes deeper than that. Your business will need people in key positions as it grows. And as your business grows their positions will become more important.

What if you use sales reps in your business? Early on in my business I had one sales rep. We split the sales duties with me handling some of our oldest clients and he handled landing new clients and developing those relationships. We had some large chain businesses and of course I new what locations of each chain we dealt with but he new the General Managers in charge of those locations.

But a key element in his job description was to pursue new clients and eventually he stopped doing that preferring to only visit his existing clients. We eventually came to a head on this issue and I had to let him go. But this left a void and I had to step into his job to keep those clients and rebuild those relationships that he had developed.

Another great example is an office assistant position. This person over time becomes your right hand person. They get to know a lot of critical information pertaining to your company and may be a person you confide in. But what do you do if suddenly they leave for whatever reason. Do you know your office well enough to find the things you need that in the past you've always just had to ask for? Even if you hire a replacement they're not going to know any better where things are than you. What if they left on bad terms? Will you know if they took something with them that they shouldn't have?

On the more serious side were the times that I had to fill in for my General Manager. He was in charge of completing all our various projects and assigning work to our crews. I always handled the sales and office areas of management. He got the work done. But because I new his job I was able to fill in with a minimum of disruption. Can you do that? So even as your business grows and you start to enjoy the fruits of your success remember that you could be just one short mishap away from losing a key employee. Just because you don't have to do the job doesn't mean you shouldn't remember how too.