This week is sad for our print company – or maybe just for me. This is our production manager’s last week, and I’m honestly very disappointed he’s leaving. The production manager position can be a high stress spot since it entails quality control, staff management and much more. Every position is essential since we’re a small business. Losing Nathaniel is tough since I really wanted him to stick around.

Like any entrepreneur, I must remain positive. More importantly, I’m using this as an opportunity to shuffle things up a bit. The last few months have been tough for everyone since we’ve been very busy, our machines have failed more than usual and Xerox is seemingly suffering from toner shortages stemming from the Japan crisis. Also, I’ve been out of the office much more than usual leading to lack of leadership and company uncertainty.

First, the salary cut allows me to promote one of our long-time finishing staff members while also bringing in two new part time people. We hired a new finisher and graphic designer which I’m hoping will help improve the overall positivity of the shop. Also, I’m promoting Jane, our current art director who handles art and customer service, to director of operations. She’s the eldest staff member who understands our customers more than anyone. She’s also been with me long enough to understand how I’d like most situations handled. I’m hoping her new role will assist in the leadership absence while I’m away from the office.

I’ve also been reevaluating different aspect of our company. I’m restructuring some of our marketing strategies (long overdue), planning a 4-day work week, cutting out less profitable offerings and more. This has nothing to do with Nathaniel’s departure, but we’re still negotiating for new production machines and almost ready to purchase DTG equipment to enhance our shirt printing division.

Is all this “shuffling” necessary? Maybe not, but when someone key leaves it seriously changes the staff dynamics so its important to plan through it and make the impact less destructive and hopefully, in my case, make our company better than ever. We’ll miss Nathaniel very much, but we have to stay strong and build a company our remaining staff members can be proud of.