Creating A Management Chart In 4 Steps

What is the purpose of creating a management chart for your cleaning business? That’s a easy one to address.

To create a “road map” of where you want your cleaning company to be at some point in the future, and the positions you will need to fill to get you there.

It’s not all that hard.

Creating a management chart helps you keep the “big picture” in mind when building your cleaning business. You want to imagine where you want your company to be at a set point in time. For arguments sake lets say that is three years from now.

Let’s get started with the process:

Step One – Management Duties

You need to think through just how many people you will need and what each of them will do for you. To make this easier, you will want to create some common sense “divisions” in your cleaning company. I can help you out with this to drive the point home.

The following example shows the four “divisions” and the job “positions” that go with each for an average cleaning company. As you can see, it’s not complicated.

• Administration

1. Management
2. Personnel

• Marketing

1. Advertising
2. Sales

• Operations

1. Production
2. Service
3. Facilities

• Finance

1. Accounts Receivable
   • Billing
   • Collections
2. Accounts Payable
   • Purchasing
   • Payroll

Now keep this in mind: You may have no intention of ever growing your company to be so large that you need different people in EACH position. That is OK. The point here is that each of the positions (and the responsibilities that come with them) need to be taken care of by someone. Even if that means you are doing it all at first.

But down the road, you could be taking care of only three or four areas and your employees could be taking care of the rest. Again, you don’t need to grow into a monster company if you don’t want to. You could stay small and continue to do it all yourself or bring in a few people and divide the responsibilities accordingly. The choice is yours.

Step 2 – Define The Roles In Each Position

We divided the company into 4 divisions (Admin, Marketing, Operations and Finance), then we added two or more positions to each division to help drive home what needs to be accomplished. Now you need to divide up all the responsibilities and group them by the number of people you plan on having work for you.

In other words you may have 100 things (from billing to hiring and everything in-between) that need to be accomplished to run a company. If you plan on having ten employees then you divide the responsibilities up between the ten people. This becomes their “job description” so to speak.

Then you need to assign a title to that position. Generally that means Office Manager, Assistant Office Manager, Bookkeeper to name a few. For those of you that need help on job descriptions click here.

Step 3 – Chart It Out

We need to create a visual representation of this body of work so we can conceptualize the project. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. That could not be any truer in this case.

Let me add a few thoughts on this before you start.

First, don’t spend countless hours creating some fancy computer generated chart. This can be done on a piece of paper if need be. The important part of this step is the “concept” itself. Secondly, create the chart so you know who reports to who, in a logical way. Leave the spaces blank and create a bunch of copies.

The chart below is what you can expect to see at this stage. Keep in mind that not all charts will look alike. Each person who starts a cleaning business has their own vision of what they want it to look like.

Step 4 – Start Filling In The Blanks

When just starting out, your name will be in most slots unless you already have staff. That is OK, the greater good is being served by having a plan in place for the future. And as we know, having a plan in place is half the battle.

Some things to keep in mind.

• Now that you have your chart in place, ask yourself this. If you have staff already, consider if one or more of them are candidates for the positions on the chart. Just try not to put anyone in over their head.

• Remember that if people see no room for advancement, they will soon leave you for greener pastures.

• Employees should understand that none of these positions (to start with anyway) come with higher pay, or are full-time. You need to educate them that when companies are small, each person must wear many hats.

• Avoid the common mistake of keeping all the tasks you love and giving the crappy ones to everyone else. Not because you should not sub out the less enjoyable tasks, but because your CEO time is very valuable. If the task is mundane and can be done by others (even of you love this task) you need to assign someone else to do it. You need to focus on the items that only you have the skills for!

Take a good look at the chart once more, then start the process of creating your own management chart. You will be glad you did!