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Glue Stick Guy: Right Person Right Spot

In my second job after college, I worked in the Quality Assurance division of a manufacturing plant for a giant international corporation. This was my first experience with the world of manufacturing, and it was fascinating to learn my way around the plant and watch how our food products were produced (using the optimized recipes I created), canned and packaged for transport across the US, Canada and Mexico. The variety of jobs was impressive, from the chemists and biologists in the lab testing product, to the engineers overseeing the equipment, to the union employees making sure the line continues running 24/7. And now, many years after that experience, there was one employee whose job really stuck with me (no pun intended). He was the glue stick guy.

Glue Stick Guy

Glue stick guy was the most senior employee in the union, and therefore was paid the most and had his pick of the jobs. And the job he picked was monitoring the bin of glue sticks used to stick the labels onto the cans. When the bin ran low of glue sticks, he would shovel more into the bin so the line never ran out of glue for the label machinery.

There were younger union professionals at the plant, monitoring computer screens that oversaw the entire manufacturing line. These were engineers but they were union, and so made less money and had less PTO than glue stick guy.

I often thought about his job, as I sat at my office doing statistical analysis and optimizing recipes. What did he think about all day staring at that bin of glue sticks? How did he pass the time? I would be bored out of my mind just staring at a bin of glue sticks.

What didn’t occur to me was that for him, this was just a job, not his life. He took on a relatively low stress responsibility, showed up every day, made decent money and could then live for the evenings and weekends – camping, fishing, hunting, hanging out with friends and family with not a single thought (ever!) about his job.

Maybe there was something to his choice? Although I will admit that I don’t think I could handle a job like that for more than a week or two before I’d go stir crazy.

Small Business Owners <> Glue Stick Guy

As a small business owner, it is clear that you most certainly can NOT be a glue stick guy, only looking at one small piece of the whole operation and trusting that everything else is not your problem. As a matter of fact, I would say that small business owners are by necessity the opposite of glue stick guy. You have to be involved in everything – from the operational details to the vision and plans for growth.

So what’s the point of me sharing this story? Well, there are two main reasons why I bring this up. Let’s start with the first. As a small business owner, you cannot be like glue stick guy at work. If you are too single minded on your tasks, something will slip through the cracks. So ask yourself – am I spending too much time on any one particular task? Am I too wrapped up in operations? Or finances, obsessing over spreadsheets and dashboards? Do you lift your head up from that proverbial glue stick bin and look around?

And, as a small business owner, you should perhaps aspire to be just a little bit more like glue stick guy when you’re NOT at work. Give yourself a mental break. Stop checking emails in the evenings and weekends. Try to engage your brain in a recreational activity that doesn’t let you get wrapped up in work issues. Play a complex sport, build something, bake something, read something (fiction please!), connect with others. Enjoy getting away from work a bit.

Should your employees be Glue Stick Guys?

My second reason for bringing up glue stick guy is to ask: Should you hire glue stick guys?

The answer – it depends.

And here is where I refer to the classic Harvard Business Review article from 1983: “The Five Stages of Small Business Growth” by Neil C. Churchill and Virginia L. Lewis.

The first stage of a small business is “Existence” – you are just trying get enough customers to become viable, and you as the owner are likely wearing pretty much every hat. But to grow, you need to hire employees to do the main activity that brings in revenue – change the oil, clean the houses, work the CNC machine, etc. Beyond this, you are in charge of everything else.

And, according to the Five Stages article, these first subordinates “should be of at least average competence”. In other words, sure, they could be glue stick guys. As a matter of fact, that could be great for you. They do their task, they do it well, they show up every day, and they don’t think about work when they leave the job at the end of their day.

The second stage of growth is “Survival”. Now you have enough business to continue to exist, and your main issue is to make enough revenue to cover expenses, including capital assets. At this point, you may need to hire some manager level folks to oversee your team.

In this stage, those managers do not make major decisions for your business. You as the owner are still making all the decisions, and the manager “carries out the rather well-defined orders of the owner”. You may not wear all the hats, but you wear most of them and are still the sole decision maker.

Glorified Glue Stick Guy

As you move from the survival stage to the third stage – “Success”, you have one key decision to make. Do you want to grow and scale your business? Or do you want to use the business to support you, hire some C-suite types to run it, and do your own thing while the business essentially runs itself (but doesn’t grow)?

If you like the idea of the business running itself, then, according to the Fives Stages article, you should be sure to hire managers that are “competent, but need not be of the highest caliber, since their upward potential is limited” by your goal to stay the same size over time. You need a team of professionals that are happy to run the business but not eager to make changes or grow things significantly. So perhaps this is a version of Glue Stick Guy? The focus is on maintaining the status quo, keeping things going without major changes.

There are many businesses that end up in this spot – including professional service businesses, some franchises, businesses in slow growing communities where growth could be a challenge, among others. You could be an accounting firm that has just the right mix of clients. A franchise store or restaurant with no plans for expansion. Or a machine shop with just enough work to keep busy and bring in a decent salary for the team and profits for the owner.

There is certainly nothing wrong with this path – you are creating a lifestyle business that works well for you and supports a team of employees, bringing jobs to your community. You should still be able to sell the business if you built it right and have separated yourself from the day-to-day operations.

Graduate from Glue Stick Guy

If you decide that you want to grow and scale instead of staying stable, then now is the time to look for someone who has some vision and complex skills. Someone who wants to join you on the journey and can assist with putting systems in place that allow for growth. As you venture from the third stage to the fourth, “Take-off”, you now need to have a team that allows you to delegate more than just the basic revenue creating tasks. You are no longer the key decision maker. You have to be able to trust your team, encourage them to take initiative, and be willing to let them make mistakes.

According to the Five Stages article, these new team members must be “very competent to handle a growing and complex business environment”. The business can run without you, but you are still guiding the vision and taking on the financial and managerial challenges of those growing pains.

And, in some cases, you as the small business owner will find this stage to be incredibly challenging. You may need to bring on executives, investors or a new CEO to oversee this stage. Or some additional training or support from a business owner roundtable group or an executive coach can help you ‘graduate’ from “business owner” to “CEO”.

This is a challenging time, and your team is likely made of up those steady employees in operations who show up every day and do their job and do it well (your glue stick guys) along with a team of experienced professionals who work with you to address the systems and financial hurdles you need to overcome to really grow your business and finally get to the fifth stage, which is “Maturity”.

Right Person, Right Spot

Whether your business follows this traditional “Five Stages” journey or takes its own path, the key is to think about each person you hire and what skillsets and capabilities you need them to have for your business to be successful at its current stage.

Do you want someone who could grow into an effective manager? Someone you could ultimately trust to help you navigate the many challenges of business growth? Or do you need some solid glue stick guys, who know their job, show up to do it and don’t give it another thought when the day comes to an end?

I would argue that small businesses in general typically do better with employees who can multi-task and are open to taking on new responsibilities or learning new skillsets. The nature of a small business requires more flexibility sometimes than a giant multinational corporation like the one that employed glue stick guy.

At the same time, I can guarantee you that a majority of business owners would be thrilled to hire someone who knows their job, shows up every day, does the work without complaint, and enjoys their time off with no thought to all the worries resting on the head of his or her employer (you!).

So as you work to grow your business, think carefully about who you’re looking for, and what level of education, capabilities, skillsets, or even personality traits are a good fit for that job at your current stage. Is there room to grow in that role? Or do you need to just count on this person to show up and do their job? Whether that job is shoveling glue sticks into a bin, taking care of the books, or interpreting legal documents.

Plan for your own journey from first to second to third stage and beyond by making sure you are putting the right people in the right places at the right stages.

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Check out the full Harvard Business Review article, The Five Stages of Small Business Growth to help you along your journey, and consider the value of a business owner roundtable group or online accountability group, where your fellow business owners help hold you accountable to your own growth goals for your business.