Over the past few years like so many people, I’ve had a major change in direction in my daily professional life. One of the biggest changes is that I’ve experience is not having employees. A well written article today by Sam Mallikarjurnan getting my hands dirty and helping other businesses with both their business strategy and marketing strategy.

I truly enjoy the work that I do day by day and know that I am incredibly fortunate that despite a professional disruption, I’ve been able to manage to adapt, survive and continue to grow as a person and as a professional.   One thing Sam did not discuss was if he actually missed managing employees. Just because one makes a conscious effort to get out of the direct line of managing people, does not mean that there was not satisfaction and enjoyment when that was a part my day-to-day responsibilities.

As any entrepreneur will tell you as chief cook and bottle washer you wear many hats. Leading a team is an awesome thing and also an awesome responsibility. It takes consistent time and effort to be effective and as far as I am concerned it’s nearly impossible to be great at leading the team, great at landing and managing new client relationships as well as manage the out-of-house partners that invariably help make things all work smoothly.

I know that near the end of my former company’s life I was not a very good manager as I was most concerned about keeping the lights on and I could have done a better job of communicating what was happening. It would not have changed the outcome, but my sense of time to communicate was disrupted until it was too late but to say ‘its’ over’.

So for the past few years I’ve espoused the benefits of NOT managing people directly. And it has been great and I’ve found greater focus has led to better results for our clients and for my future professional prospects.   Yet I do miss directly helping lead a team, nurturing talented people, sharing a vision of where the company, OUR company; is heading and why.

The truth is that I’d be interested in helping build a team again sometime in the future. But for now I am thrilled to be ‘doing the stuff’ to help our clients achieve success. Thanks to Sam for reminding me.