Taking inventory of everything you do in a week

An owner task inventory means writing down, during a normal week, everything you do, even the small things. In a few minutes a day, you end up with a list that shows exactly what still rests on you. It's the starting point for delegating, standardizing or automating, and for measuring your place in the business.

Why take inventory

Ask an owner what they do in a week, and they'll often answer: "I manage." True, but not useful. Managing is a hundred small actions: approving a purchase, calling back a client, fixing a quote, sorting out a scheduling conflict, signing cheques.

Those small actions are invisible because they've become reflexes. Yet they're what make a business dependent on its owner. A buyer doesn't worry about "management" in general. They worry about who will do each of those actions on the Monday after the sale.

The inventory makes them visible. It's also the raw material for mapping your business processes: every line of the inventory finds its place in a process.

The grid to use

Set up a sheet with six columns, in a notebook or a spreadsheet:

• Task: one specific action, in one line, starting with a verb.
• Time: an estimate rounded to the quarter hour.
• Process: sell, purchase, produce, deliver, invoice, hire, finance, other.
• Frequency: daily, weekly, monthly, yearly.
• Who else could?: someone who could do it today, or with a little training.
• Decision: filled in only at the end of the week.

Sample line: Approve the parts purchase order · 10 min · Purchasing · daily · the shop foreman · delegate.

During the week, fill in only the first four columns. Don't judge yet.

The tasks people forget to log

Some tasks almost always slip past the first inventory. Remember to add them:

• Client calls and texts you get in the evening or on weekends.
• The answers you give in passing on the shop floor or in the office.
• Prices you quote "from memory".
• Relationships with the bank, the accountant and the insurers.
• Monthly and yearly tasks: month-end, insurance renewal, physical inventory count, price negotiations with suppliers.
• Problems you fix because "it's faster if I do it".

That last category is often the most revealing. It shows where you've become, without meaning to, the bottleneck of the business.

An example in Mauricie

An invented case, but a typical one: Richard, 60, owns a heavy-vehicle repair shop in Trois-Rivières. Twenty-two employees, about $3 million in revenue, a client base of regional trucking companies. He's thinking of selling in three or four years.

After his week, Richard has 96 lines. Some surprise him. He spent close to six hours on repair estimates, because trucking clients "want to talk to Richard". He approved about twenty parts purchases, most of them for a few hundred dollars. He answered client calls almost every evening.

Filling in the "who else could?" column, he sees that his shop foreman could handle most routine estimates, that the parts clerk could approve purchases under a set amount, and that evening calls could go to an on-call line shared by two mechanics.

His "decision" column ends up like this: about twenty tasks to keep, about forty to delegate, around fifteen to standardize (with an estimating grid and a purchase limit), about ten to automate (service reminders to clients, invoice follow-ups) and a few to simply stop. Richard now has a plan instead of a feeling.

Sort each line: five decisions

At the end of the week, fill in the last column. Each task gets one decision only:

1. Keep. Tasks that truly need the owner: direction, certain relationships, strategic decisions. They'll still need to be handed over one day.
2. Delegate. Someone could do it now, or after short training. See the decisions that always come back to the owner.
3. Standardize. The task needs your judgment because there's no rule. Write the rule (a price grid, a purchase limit), and it becomes delegable.
4. Automate. The task is repetitive and low-judgment: follow-ups, reminders, reports. Our article on small business automation gives examples.
5. Stop. Some tasks no longer have a reason to exist. They're done out of habit.

Your plan for the week

• Pick a normal week and set up the six-column grid.
• Log each task as the day goes, in one line, with an estimated time.
• Friday: add monthly and yearly tasks from memory.
• Fill in the "who else could?" column honestly.
• Give every line a decision.
• Pick three tasks to delegate starting the following week, and talk to the people involved.

The "keep" tasks that rest on your know-how (pricing, tricks of the trade, client history) will need to be captured one day. That's the subject of capturing the owner's know-how before they leave.

A note on honesty

The inventory only works if it's honest. Log the task you redid because the employee's version "wasn't quite right", the client you called to smooth things over, the purchase you approved without looking. Those are exactly the lines that show where the business still leans on you, and where a successor would struggle on day one.

Choosing the first three tasks to delegate

Don't start with the heaviest task. Pick three that tick these boxes: they come up often, a mistake would cost little, and someone already does half of them. For Richard, that's parts purchases under $500, estimates for routine repairs (brakes, tires), and booking appointments. For each one, take ten minutes with the person: what they decide alone, what they flag to you, and starting when.

Then put a date in your calendar, six months out, to redo the inventory. The list should be shorter. It's one of the simplest measures of your progress toward a business that runs without you, and so of what a buyer will see.

Do it with a pro

Alone, the inventory is quick, but the sorting isn't: owners tend to "keep" everything. Through interviews with you and your team, we do the inventory and the sorting in a few days, and our regional partner helps put the delegation and the tools in place. To see where you stand, start with the free audit, or go back to the first step of the path.

Owner independence