Running a Small Team: how to keep your staff on track as a small business

Running a small team boils down to the standards you set. Even average staff can meet structure and work within guardrails. Where small team management can fail is in the details, or lack thereof. Having clearly defined workplace operations makes your life — and your staff’s lives — much easier, so leading a team starts with how you structure their daily work.

Here is how you can lead a small team effectively as a small business owner.

Building a standard that works for small teams

Building work standards is about creating a work structure in which your staff can thrive. It gives them the rules to follow and expectations that they can meet, while also giving them room to improve. To begin, you need to create the structure in which your staff works (the how), attach role ownership so they understand the importance of their work (the why), and staff recognition to reinforce the value they provide (the when).

Setting up a weekly structure

A challenge that small business owners often face when managing their staff is either ‘hand-holding’ workers or having to redo their work to correct mistakes. If this problem extends beyond the first 90 days of a new hire and applies to all your staff, you have a delegation problem.

Business owners need to establish a clear weekly structure, so employees know what to do and how to do it. This starts at the beginning of the workweek with a ‘briefing’, followed by the mid-week ‘check-in’, and finishes with the end-of-week ‘debrief’. This is the simplest structure you can use to effectively manage your staff.

Weekly structure:

• Start-of-week (SOW) brief: Outline outcomes and priorities for the week.
• One-on-one check-in: Getting a pulse on what’s been completed or needs attention.
• End-of-week (EOW) debrief: Discuss wins, losses, and priorities for the future.

By creating structure, everyone has room to perform their tasks and responsibilities, while also giving you the ability to check in, see how things are going, and lead your team when needed.

Attaching ownership to roles

Attaching ownership — your employee’s understanding of why they do their role — helps you and your staff share the same expectations. When they understand the outcomes your business needs, it helps them operate independently and fix problems on their own.

So what does this look like if ownership isn’t established? Say you give a member of your staff a standard operating procedure (SOP) to complete a task. They complete the SOP and the task, but the outcome you wanted, or outlined in the SOP, doesn’t occur. What’s likely to happen? That staff member will tell you it didn’t work, and you’ll have to complete it. But if they have the context and understanding behind their role, staff are more likely to problem-solve without you.

When running a small team, your job is to help your staff understand the “why” behind their actions. This is what attaching ownership to roles is about: you are providing context behind the work, and when your staff understand the context, they’ll understand the desired outcome. Make them responsible for that outcome, and you’ll see less hand-holding or work-fixing. So provide the ‘why’ behind the work they do, and explain more than just what’s in the job description.

Creating recognition in your team structure

Recognition within your team is about making your staff’s work, ideas, and success visible. By acknowledging the value of your staff openly, you validate them as people, not just workers. To do this, you need to establish recognition within every aspect of your weekly structure.

1. Briefing: At the SOW, when discussing outcomes and priorities, open the floor to any solutions that would benefit a wider discussion. This encourages staff to work together to find common solutions to their own problems.
2. Check-ins: By mid-week, you’ve let your staff work on their solutions to their responsibilities, and now you’re checking in. Resist the temptation to fix any problems, but talk through solutions. “In the past, this has worked…” As an active participant, you are encouraging staff ownership.
3. Debriefing: Here, highlight wins for the week. Share your staff’s success across the wider team, making it part of your system. At the same time, when challenges arise, encourage your staff to approach them as a team.

With recognition woven into your structure, you motivate them to want to contribute to your business.

Work standards in action

Let’s look at how creating good (and poor) structure, ownership, and recognition affects the staff management of a small business.

Marty’s Cafe Example: Standardised System vs No System

A standardised system helps Marty’s business grow stronger by giving staff room to develop skills, provide feedback, and solve problems without his constant supervision. On the other hand, while the no-system approach doesn’t spell disaster, it doesn’t show any improvement, either. Without a system, cracks start to appear, and who’s to say no-system Marty will have time for solutions when he’s constantly putting out fires?

Small staff management for small businesses

Managing a small team starts with establishing standards within your system. A weekly structure gives your team room to do their work, while ownership tells them why their work is important. You then complete the system with recognition, which validates your staff and motivates them to contribute to your business.

To get started, try implementing a system that works for you at a small scale by:

1. Creating a simple workweek structure that is segmented into 3 parts. For example, Monday walkthroughs, Wednesday catch-ups, Friday debriefs.
2. Initiate one-on-ones to identify gaps in your workers’ understanding of their roles.
3. Establish a recognition system, like an Employee Spotlight.

This should help you get started on setting better standards for your team.