Leading the company

Most solar companies at your stage run on the owner. You take the calls, you visit the roofs, you chase the electricity department, and you check the work. It works, and it is also the ceiling. A company can only grow as fast as the owner can be in two places at once.

Leading the company means changing your job. Less doing, more deciding what "done well" looks like, putting it on paper, and checking that it happens.

Decide the jobs only you do

Write down three jobs that only you will do. For most owners at this stage they are:

1. Relationships that bring in business. Brand managers, big customers, housing societies, electricians who refer work.
2. Money. Pricing, payments, credit with suppliers.
3. The final quality check. Not doing every installation. Checking that the checklist was followed.

Everything else gets an owner who is not you. That person does not need to be as good as you on day one. They need a checklist, a clear finish line, and your attention once a week.

One weekly meeting

Hold one meeting a week, on the same day and at the same time, for 45 minutes. Keep the same agenda every week so nobody has to prepare for anything new.

1. The numbers. Enquiries, site surveys, quotes sent, jobs booked, installations done, subsidies credited. Six numbers, compared with last week.
2. Stuck jobs. Any job that has sat in the same stage for more than seven days.
3. Complaints. Every open one, and when it will be fixed.
4. Next week's installations. Who is on which roof, and what material is needed.

One rule makes the meeting work: every stuck job leaves the meeting with one name and one date. "We will look into it" is not an answer. "Ravi calls the electricity office on Tuesday" is.

Standards beat speeches

Telling your team "do quality work" changes nothing, because everyone already believes they do. A written checklist changes behaviour, because it turns quality into things a person can see and tick. Chapters 4 and 5 give you those checklists. Your job as the leader is to insist they are used on every job, including the rushed ones.

How you talk to your team

• Praise in public, and be specific. "Earthing on the Civil Lines job was perfect, and the photos were clear" teaches everyone what good looks like.
• Correct in private, using the checklist. Point to the line that was missed, not to the person.
• Do not quietly fix mistakes yourself. It feels faster. It also means the same mistake comes back next week. Show the person, then let them fix it.

Do this

• Write down the three jobs only you will do, and give everything else an owner
• Fix a day and time for the weekly meeting, and hold the first one
• Put the six weekly numbers on one sheet, on paper or on your phone
• Give every stage of a job one named owner, from enquiry to subsidy
• In every meeting, give every stuck job a name and a date
• Once a week, visit one site without warning and check it against the checklist