Concept
The technician trap
The technician trap is the problem at the centre of Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited: a business that runs entirely on its founder's craft. Every job passes through the founder's hands, so the business cannot grow past their hours or survive their holiday. The owner has bought a job.
Gerber says every business needs three people: the technician who does the work, the manager who plans and keeps records, and the entrepreneur who decides where it is going. In a business of one they are all the founder. The technician who starts a business does the work all day, the manager's job badly at night, and the entrepreneur's job never, because there is no time. The sign of the trap is that nothing happens unless the owner does it. Paul Jarvis's Company of One adds a useful counterpoint: staying small can be a deliberate choice. So the trap is not size but dependence, and the test is whether the business could run for a week without you. The way out begins with asking what it would look like if it did.
A real-life example
An electrician in Malatya has more work than he can take on and answers every call himself, from the van, between jobs. He quotes at night, invoices on Sundays and has not had a week off in three years, because no one else knows his customers or his prices. By every outside measure the business is doing well; it is a job with a van.
How to use it
- 1Count the hours you gave each of the three roles this week; if it was all technician, you are in the trap.
- 2Write what would break if you were ill for a week; that is your dependency list.
- 3Give the entrepreneur's question one hour a week: what would this look like without me?