Growth brings increased opportunity, but at the same time, increases risk. Poorly managed risk can cause failure, even if the business is growing.
So, how do we plan for success in a fast-growing business?
There are three fundamentals to successfully scale up your business: having a clear organisation structure, having comprehensive systems and processes - both of which must be clearly documented - and finally, developing great leadership skills.
Fundamental One: Your Organisation Structure
1. A clear organisation structure allows a business to successfully scale.
It will enable you to increase your revenue without creating bottlenecks and overloading your team. Your bottom line should increase at a greater rate than your revenue, as your business becomes more efficient and achieves economies of scale.
2. Every business has 10 departments.
Your organisation structure depicts the 10 departments in your business, the responsibilities of each position, and how the hierarchy works. Each department should have only one leader. The leader, whilst holding the responsibility for the department, does not necessarily perform the tasks.
3. As you scale up your business, ensure you develop your key team members.
Every role should have a clear job description identifying a maximum of 10 key responsibilities, with clear tasks and KPIs identified for each responsibility.
Empowering the capable members in your team to learn how to lead a department will engage them to support you in your quest to scale. Delegating the leadership of some departments will also free up your capacity to work on higher level activities.
4. Review your organisation structure regularly, updating key responsibilities as they evolve.
Ensure the work your team is doing aligns with your structure. Ask your team if their roles have changed at their performance review and update their job descriptions and the organisation structure accordingly.
By ensuring you have the correct organisation structure, youâll be able to gain more control and spend more time enjoying your hobbies while growing your business.
Fundamental Two: Documenting your Systems and Processes
With growth comes growing pains. Such pains can affect team morale as well as your margins. Itâs critical to pre-empt potential friction and put systems in place to ensure you scale up with minimal disruption.
Itâs essential that you regularly review your businessâs systems and have clearly documented processes in place - for consistency, efficiency, and so that you can delegate more responsibilities to your team. Following these steps will help you establish a great system:
1. Identify your key systems.
Focus on documenting your most critical processes first. These may be customer focused, those where only one person knows how to perform the task, the tasks currently causing the most friction, or those preventing you from being paid on time.
2. Develop a standardised approach to documenting your systems.
Document processes from start to finish in a concise, logical, and visual way. Start with diagrams or flowcharts, as theyâre easier to digest, then embellish each step with text. Where necessary, include âhow toâ guides, checklists, and templates (such as welcome letters or customer response email templates) within each system to ensure consistency and efficiency.
3. Break down each step into bite sized pieces.
If an overarching process requires touch from multiple team members, ensure the process includes the necessary communication points (so âPerson Bâ knows itâs time to do their piece), and that itâs clear which role has overall responsibility for completing the process.
4. Clearly label and store your procedural documents.
Your team needs to be able to access and execute procedures fast. Online document storage is best (the trees will thank you).
5. Identify the best person to draft each process.
If itâs a finance task, itâs likely someone within the Finance department should draft the system. This need not be a highly onerous task for the business owner, however, taking time to review these will save time and reduce rework in future.
6. Test and review the process!
Unless it involves learning how to use software, a new team member should be able to pick up a procedure and perform a task with little or no support.
Regularly review and update your systems to ensure theyâre still best practice. Empower the team to âownâ the systems they use and encourage them to drive improvements. Resist the urge to dictate how things must work, as those using the systems will have a better understanding of improvement opportunities.
7. Team training.
Include relevant procedures in new team member induction and make it clear to your team that theyâre expected to follow the system. If mistakes are made, blame the system, not the person⌠and improve the system.
8. Consider what can be automated or streamlined.
Technology is moving at a rapid pace. Encourage the âtechiesâ in your team to suggest automation opportunities, apps, or software solutions that could help your business scale better. A small investment could lead to a massive time saving - time is money!
Fundamental three: Developing Great Leadership
Most reasons why businesses fail, directly and indirectly, point to leadership failure.
From poor planning to poor hiring, poor communication to poor process, poor capacity to poor execution - most things can be fixed with great leadership.
Scaling the business will make new demands on a leaderâs time and attention and itâs critical that these are both focused on the right things:
1. Planning - Setting a clear vision and relevant business goals, regularly reviewing progress, and resetting goals to drive performance improvement.
2. Inspiring - Motivating others to achieve more than before; showing them their potential to make an impact.
3. Empowering - Enabling your team to find their own solutions by guiding them with your support, trust and encouragement.
4. Culture - Demonstrating allegiance to the team and standing for the businessâs core values.
5. Innovating - Continuous improvement in people, product, and process.
6. Personal growth - Developing and supporting your future leaders with mentoring and guidance.
Great leadership is about influencing others in the direction of a common goal.
While there can only be one leader of a business, there are seven operational departments that need individual leaders. People can lead multiple departments initially but, as the business grows, you should look to empower others and delegate the leadership of some departments to âleaders in trainingâ.
Have you ever heard the quote, âWhat got you here wonât get you thereâ? These are wise words from Marshall Goldsmith and the title of a book you should read!. Choosing to scale your business does not come without risks and challenges! Get in touch with our team at Thrive CA to discuss how we can help you achieve your goals.
âIncredible things in the business world are never made by a single person, but by a team.â - Steve Jobs