So...you've successfully navigated the start-up phase in your business.
It's been challenging, right? A little like being on a rollercoaster...exciting and nerve-wracking, sometimes even terrifying.
But if you think it's the biggest challenge you'll face in business, you might want to think again.
The real "fun" starts when you decide to scale your business.
Why? Because just about everything you've done and learned during start-up changes wien growth - profitable growth - becomes your focus. It's those owners who recognise this who create sustainably growing businesses. It's next to impossible to move from start-up to scale-up without a shift in mindset.
And the very first step toward successfully scaling up your business is to take a deep breath and review where you are now, and where you want to take your business.
Here's where to start...
The foundation: purpose and vision
Purpose and vision should be the foundation of any business, regardless of its stage of development. they should drive your business in all its decision-making, especially when it comes to scaling.
Let's review their meaning:
Business purpose
It's easy to lose sight of why you started your business when you're neck-deep dealing with the challenges of running it. If you pause for a moment, you'll realise it's still there...the non-financial motivator for doing what you do. For us here at GrowthCatalyst, it's helping businesses create a decision-making safety zone that underpins sustainable growth.
Why is purpose the foundation for business growth? Here are a few reasons:
It guides decision-making: it's your "north star" helping you shape and grow your business;
It inspires and motivates: research has shown that businesses with clarity of purpose are more innovative and prepared to push the envelope through measured, targeted risk-taking;
It attracts clients: consumers of most goods and services are attracted to businesses that demonstrate a real commitment to them. They're prepared to spend more with those businesses and become their advocates;
It attracts talent: people want to work for purpose-driven businesses. It's in our nature to want to feel like our work contributes to something more than the bottom line. When people feel like this at work, they're more engaged and productive.
If you're among those for whom purpose has become less prominent over time, it's important to recalibrate. It's purpose that will create your decision-making "safety zone", guiding not just what you do but also why you're doing it.
It's a fundamental foundation for a successful scale-up effort.
Business vision
This is your description of what you want your business to look like in future - what you dream of building. It can be expressed in terms of any of a number of attributes, including physical size, market penetration, products or services offered, to whom they're offered and many other characteristics.
As a big-picture objective, your vision is important because it:
Provides direction: it offers a clear path and rationale for growth;
Enables clear goal setting: which is an essential motivator for your people;
Helps unify your employees: it provides a common understanding of where the business is heading.
If your vision isn't clear to everyone in the business, take some time to communicate and reaffirm it. When the whole team works toward a single, clear vision, your growth aspirations are easier to achieve than if that vision didn't exist.
Strategy: the roadmap for achieving your vision
While purpose and vision are the fundamental foundations of sustainable growth, they only really come to life when you create your strategy.
Why is strategy important?
For a lot of reasons. A good strategy sets your business up for sustainable success in several ways:
It provides a clear growth plan: when aligned with your purpose and vision, strategy guides the decisions that need to be made and helps prioritise the initiatives you want to work through;
It helps allocate resources effectively, which helps you maximise return on investment. We're guessing your business is like most others in that you don't have unlimited resources at your disposal. So smart, targeted use of those you do have is essential;
It provides an effective way to identify opportunities and prioritise them with a high level of confidence;
It helps align employees with your purpose and vision, which contributes to higher engagement, motivation and productivity.
For most owners in start-up phase, the idea of creating long-term plans isn't high on the agenda. Sure, you probably had an idea of where you wanted to eventually take your business, but your attention was more likely firmly focused on getting short-term runs on the board.
As you scale, though, strategy must move up the priority list. Don't unnecessarily reduce the time and effort put into this step. Again, it's a key ingredient for scale-up success.
Business and action plans: making it all happen
With your foundations taken care of, it's time to give your scaling aspirations every chance of becoming a reality. That means getting stuck into some quite detailed, short-term thinking.
Your business and action plans should spell out exactly what must be done, by when and by whom to execute your growth strategy and achieve your vision. Following the steps below is an effective way to approach this part of your scale-up planning:
Brainstorm all your opportunities
What can you identify that you might pursue to help you achieve your longer-term (ie strategic) objectives? Don't discount anything at this stage...that will happen later. Right now, it's important to keep an open mind about what's possible from a scale-up perspective.
List all the strengths in your business
What do you do well that will help you make the most of the opportunities you've identified? There's no need to link strengths to each opportunity. It's enough to understand what you already do well and should do more of.
Identify any internal limitations
These are the factors that, left unchecked, will either slow your progress or stall it completely. At this stage, steer clear of solution mode...it's not the point of this part of the exercise. Rather, it's about identifying what you can realistically improve on or just stop doing.
Capture external risks and threats
What could realistically be in play from an external viewpoint that could hinder your efforts? Because these are largely or entirely beyond your control, you only need to be aware of their potential to disrupt. You might, at some point, create contingency plans to mitigate their impact but that's also a job for later.
Prioritise the opportunities you've identified
First, run each opportunity through your purpose, vision and strategy filter. If an opportunity won't help you execute your strategy, or push you towards achieving your vision, you need to assess whether it's something you should pursue. Likewise if it's not true to your business purpose.
With that first pass assessment done, work through the remaining list of opportunities and rank them according to impact and ease of implementation. You can use something like the chart below to do this. As part of this process, revisit your list of strengths and limitations...they'll have an impact on the ease of implementation element of your thinking.
Agree with your team (if you have one) single-point accountability for each opportunity. that individual won't necessarily do all the work but will be accountable for "project management". If you don't have a team, that buck of course stops with you.
Review your progress
Completing all the steps above and creating a plan is one thing...a big thing for most businesses. But if you don't stop periodically to check on how the plan is progressing, it's an almost pointless exercise. So agreeing a process and timetable for review is critical. This isn't a set and forget affair and your success will depend on regular check-ins to monitor the achievement (or not) of important milestones. Celebrate your successes and be ready to identify and implement remedial action where timetables slip.
For those with a preference for visuals...
The graphic below neatly summarises what we've described in detail above - that is, a planning process that's driven by purpose.
That's a lot
It is.
And all we've focused on is the top-down, purpose driven planning needed to put you in the best position to achieve your scale-up aspirations.
Out of that will come other considerations. Things like:
Your leadership style: where you'll move away from being a hands-on jack-of-all-trades to become more of a director of traffic. It'll be had for you to do this (it almost always is) but a necessary mindset change when scaling your business;
Branding and marketing: which will need to scale with your business. You may need to reassess things like your ideal client personas, campaign strategies, use of media and others;
Operations and processes: as you scale, keep an eye on how the back office is coping with growth, emphasising the quality of the client experience. Invest appropriately in effecient and effective systems. This is an area that has significant impact on client satisfaction and engagement, with obvious effects on your ability to scale;
Innovation and flexibility: embrace them. They're essential to your scale-up aspirations. It's odd how often we see businesses moving from start-up to scale-up that somehow lose this focus. Don't be one of them.
Above all, keep your people fully involved in the scale-up adventure. That means being clear on purpose and recognising and rewarding purpose-driven behaviours. Seek input and feedback from your people. Involve them in the planning process as much as you can. If that sounds like a challenge and that it might feel like you're letting go of control, remember...some of the best ideas that you'll ever see will come from your team.
How confident are you in your scale-up plans?
Are you clear on your business purpose? Vision? Strategy?
What about detailed business and action plans?
Are your people on board? How do you know?
A conversation with a GrowthCatalyst adviser could be just what you need to create the decision-making safety zone you need to realise your scale-up aspirations and build long-term, sustainable and profitable business growth.
Contact us to arrange a face-to-face or virtual conversation.
Alternatively, you can book a time for an initial discussion here.
In other news...
GrowthCatalyst has joined forces with a number of like-minded professionals to form the advisory group Konektis (check us out here). Collectively, the Konektis team provides integrated, multi-disciplinary advice to SMEs to deliver a "one strategy" outcome.
Take the Konektis Pulse Check and receive immediate, actionable ideas to grow your business.
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