The company's expansion was directed by two persons. Mary Kay herself set the direction, created the culture and served as a highly visible cheerleader. Richard Rogers, her son, handled the management functions.
I've owned and managed a number of businesses throughout my life, and the issues talked about above were some of the most important I discovered.
The biggest one to me is to understand the difference between the two roles participated in by Mary Kay and Richard, It's irrelevant that they were related, it's the underlying realities that were important.
Through the years I've met some very frustrated business leaders. One of the major causes of frustration were not knowing the difference between the two types of leadership roles that are mentioned above. If you're a visionary and a motivator, you can be extraordinarily frustrated if you are thrust into the role of taking care of the operational side of a business.
This is one of the key problems small business owners have. They're great with setting the direction, culture and motivation of a company, but may be horrible and like a fish out of water when it comes to operations. The result is operational chaos and not understanding why it's so frustrating.
Small businesses or even divisions within a larger company can be in continual difficulty from having the wrong type of person overseeing the business or unit. This doesn't mean the person is a bad worker, just the wrong fit for the job. But it does mean something has to be done.
With business owners, many times they're reluctant to let go the reigns in some areas and the business will suffer as a result. The answer it that we must let go, and in most cases, it's on the operational side of the business.
We need to understand who we are as business leaders. Our strengths will dictate where within a company or business we'll fit the best; even if we're the business owners.
If we're better at operations, then hire someone that is better at direction, business culture and motivating. If you're better at the latter, then hire someone for operations.
With Mary Kay, her strength was in sales and marketing, which catered to the non-operational side of things. She couldn't have thrived on the operational front. She knew how to grow and expand a business, operations deals with sustaining and running it. We need to know which place we better fit into.
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