Welcome back to the show today. I want to talk about coverage plans. Yes. Yes. You need one. And today I'm gonna talk about how to set that up. Now, you know, there's things going around right now, colds and sicknesses, and maybe you just want to be able to step away spontaneously with and know that everything, your team is going well, set up for success.
there's a number of reasons that we need to have a coverage plan in place, which means everybody's on the same page around what to do when you're not there. And this can be tough as a business owner, as a team leader, especially when there's a set of things that only you can handle or that you're doing that your team doesn't have a ton of visibility into.
And with a coverage plan, I don't mean you have to hand all of that off all the time or have a ton of visibility into it, but you have a framework around what happens with work that you're not doing when you're not there, especially with stuff that has to move forward. And so I wanted to share today three things to think about.
But before we dive into that, let's talk about why this is so important. Well, I think when our team members know that there's a set of work that maybe can't get done when you're not there and they, they don't feel like, you know, there's any visibility into what happens if you're not here, I think people start to wonder.
I've been on teams where I felt like, gosh, you know, this one person is carrying so much weight. Like if they're not here, how does this business move forward? I was in a design agency where it was owned by three creative directors who really ran the show completely. They did the business development, client acquisition, they ran the creative reviews, they did all the approvals.
And when one of them wasn't there. All of that person's projects came to a grinding halt. And if they had been out a week or two, that would have really thrown off our project timelines. And in that situation we really worked hard. The project management team and the operation teams really worked hard to make sure we knew, Hey, is there a backup creative director that can review this?
How do we make sure that other person gets up to speed on the project so that. We don't have to tell our clients, Hey, there was an emergency and we're just not going to deliver on time. Especially if it was something for a product launch or something that we really don't have flexibility on the timeline.
So this is going to create some, you know, sense of ease and calm and your team member that, Hey, we have things figured out if someone was to be out now, you know, a coverage plan, it sounds kind of like an insurance policy and that's really what it is. That, again, when you are not there, can't be there for whatever reason everybody knows what to do.
Okay. You have stuff moving forward. So the, three things that I want to talk about today, first, you know, having a really clear understanding of what has to get done in a given day, in a given week. In a given month, things like that, because when you categorize work in that way, you know, okay, if I have to be gone this amount of time, what has to move forward?
For example, a client of mine owns a law firm and she does her client billing once a week. So if she was out for a day or two, then some of her paralegals could take over some of their responsibilities. But if she was out for two weeks, we know that well, billing is something that she'd have to hand off.
So distinguishing between what are the daily tasks, the weekly tasks, and the monthly tasks, that's going to really set you up for success. Same thing if you're running an agency and you do, you know, client reviews every Friday, let's say, or on a certain cadence. Well, again, if you're out a day or two, you don't have to notify the clients, but if you're going to be missing a few of those reviews and you're the one that usually runs those presentations, that's when maybe you need to have a team member get ready run those or notify the client you're going to be out.
So this set of things, you know, I would just jot it down, start a Google doc, write down, you know, what are the typical things that you handle that really are on your plate on a daily basis, on a weekly basis and on a monthly basis. And that's going to give you a sense of what kinds of coverage plans you really want to make.
Now by coverage plan, I just mean a checklist. Okay. I don't 30 page document about everything that goes on in your day, but saying, Hey, you know, every Saturday I do billing and here's what's involved. Every Friday we have that client meeting every, you know, end of day Friday, we plan the work for the next week.
We go through the Asana board, whatever it looks like. Right? So, so you have a sense of what are these repeatable tasks that you are managing that potentially somebody else could take over. Now the next thing we want to do is really have a clearly defined chain of command around approvals and decisions when you can't be that decision maker.
In some situations, this is, you know, your, executive assistant that's really has a lot of visibility into the work you do. Maybe it's your ops director. Maybe it's another person in a senior role, whoever it is, you want to really be leaning on that person to know, Hey, you are kind of in the driver's seat if I'm not here.
And then making sure the rest of your team is aware of that. So this is really critical you are handing off decisions that you had made in the past to give that person air cover. Say, Hey, I am tasking Jennifer with when I'm not here, she makes the calls.
Think of her as me. She, when she says to do something, you got to do it so that that Jennifer person is set up for success. And people don't go, I'm just going to wait till the boss gets back. I don't really know here. So part of your coverage plan is communicating. These are the people I've put in charge of these different areas.
And so that's something that can also serve to get you a little bit out of the weeds. You may find, Hey, you know what? I kind of want Jennifer always to be making the calls in that different area. Or you might say, Hey, I actually, you know, Jennifer's awesome. And I really want her owning her space and I still have to make the calls, but she is the right person to make the calls when I'm not here.
Right? So either way, it doesn't mean you hand those things off forever. And then not only do you do give air cover with the rest of your team, but you sit down with that person. You say, Hey, here is the criteria I use to make the decisions. Here's what I look for when I'm making approvals. Okay, here's some of the things that have happened in the past that just to be aware of so that when people come to you with these things, what to think through.
So you not only want to set up the whole team to be trusting that person to make the calls, but you want to set that team member who's going to be making the calls, who's going to be taking over that chain of command for success so they know how to kind of act as you in that situation. Now, when we're delegating, I love to give people the freedom to solve problems in their own way and to say, how would you solve this, right?
This is a really big part of someone feeling sense of ownership, taking leadership, but that doesn't necessarily need to be the case when you're handing off a temporary decision. So I really think it is okay to say, Hey, for this, you know, day or week that I'm out. Here's the kind of decisions that I make.
Here's how I approach it. And I want you to really act as me. There's other opportunities for you to bring your own flavor into it. And this isn't the one because this is really a short term kind of quick, we're just kind of getting together, solving this thing right now and then moving forward. So distinguishing between the two saying, Hey, I totally trust you make decision on your own.
I totally trust you to act as me. This is that second one. And that's what I need from you in this moment. So clarifying that I think is really important as well. The third thing we want to do is to really understand, and this kind of ties with number one, like what has to get done on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, but what really are those things that only, only, only, only you can do?
And I talk about this when I talk about delegating work because we really want to make that list as small as possible. What are the things that literally nobody else in your business can do? Maybe it's something around financial reporting. Maybe it's something around strategy. Maybe it's something around making hiring decisions.
And then look at that list and say, Hey, back to that daily, weekly, monthly, you know, of these things that I only can do. If I was gone for this period of time, would this make or break the business? And some things would. Some things wouldn't and other things that are like, Hey, I really need somebody to drive that forward when I'm, gone.
So let's say like taking, you know, hiring and firing decisions. Let's say that's something that only you can do, like making the final call. If only you can do that, then saying, Hey, you know what? For hiring, if I were to be gone, we're going to pause, we're going to pause those because You know, I'll be back in a number of days or a week, whatever, but firing, if there was some kind of emergency and let's say you run a med spa or a wellness clinic or a gym, right.
And there's some sort of safety issue and somebody has to have that action right away. Having someone on deck that can help make that call for you is gonna be really important. Maybe you have a fractional HR person, maybe you have an HR consultant you're working with and you have that person teed up of, Hey, if I can't be here, I'd like for you to make the call.
Maybe you have an emergency that people can actually get ahold of you and say, Hey, what happened here? But with the things that really only you can do, you want to figure out, is it super, super time sensitive? Can it wait? Or if I have to make that call let's say you work in a PR agency or another kind of agency or you're an event planner or you have a marketing company or, you know, Something that where you have to make a big purchase and that's something you have to prove.
What is the threshold of where it's gotta go to you or someone in your network, like where someone can call an emergency contact almost. And if you are totally unreachable, what can people do? Who do they go to to make that call? And again, just like with this chain of command, this isn't someone that regularly makes the calls.
This is that like SOS, we're in an emergency state. We have to get an answer on this. Who do we ask? And that's going to be a small list, a small list of things that only you decide only you do that has to be done in that moment. And so it's really an important exercise to make sure that list as small as possible because if everything is riding on you, that's where you start to feel like you can't step away.
You can't take that spontaneous weekend trip away or you can't be gone all day for a kid's soccer tournament. Or you can't be, if your kid was in the hospital, you can't be there. Or if you are in the hospital or something like that, that's where we start to create. This stress. This pressure that I can't step away from the phone, the laptop that starts to kind of eat you up inside.
And that's why getting all this on paper, making a checklist, identifying these people, simple, simple things are going to be game changing for you because when you don't have that cognitive load of feeling like I got to do everything, it's all riding on me. Now you have that brain space to think about growing your business, to have more energy and maybe in this process, and I hope so.
you find there are a few things that you can delegate and that does free up more time for you. So this exercise of creating your coverage plan is also going to start to free up space for you to reinvest in your business or to just take some space away from your business. Maybe, right? Maybe you go to lunch with a friend every Friday instead of worrying about some of these things.
Okay. So this is something that I know can be helpful to work through with somebody. So again, if this is something you're like, ah, you know, I don't really know how to start or I think I got this or who's, who's the right person. This is a perfect thing to. Wrestle with in our Team Whisperer monthly consulting.
So that's a program I have where for four hours a month you have me in your back pocket for one on ones for coaching, for brainstorming things with the teams for working with your team members directly. I got a lot of teams that team members just text or call me directly and we kind of wrestle with something to, to keep the business owner to keep you kind of shielded from that until we've solved the problem.
I also in that four hours can build out processes or kind of tools, systems like that. So this is a really great example of something that we could use. In one of those sessions work through what is that coverage plan? Refine it. Talk about the rollout strategy with the team and get you set up for feeling like, whew, okay, I can take some space and if an emergency happened, my business is moving forward.
Okay. So if you're interested in learning more about team whisperer monthly consulting, send me an email at hello at leahgarber. com. Or head to my website, leahgarvin.
com and set up your scale up strategy call and we'll just talk through it. All right. See you next time.
