Growing pains

Are you like many businesses struggling to grow your business bigger?

The mindset of running a Start-Up or a small business is very different from running a large corporate business. The move from one to the other is where many businesses fail and go out of business.

As described in the book Growin Pain by  Eric Flamholtz and Yvonne Randle “Growing Pains” are best described as the problems encountered when an organisation has not been successful in developing its internal “infrastructure” to the extent necessary to support its size.

The skills and mindset needed when starting a ‘Sart-Up’ are different from the skills needed to master a larger company with more people. A founder might be a great engineer building the newest drainage gadget to hit the construction market. Prototypes and patents it, gets a friend help with some sales and maybe starts a rudimentary website. Sales take off and suddenly you need more staff, operations, sales, fulfilment, customer managers and support, marketing, IT support, finance, and procurement.

One person can’t do all of those roles and one person certainly does not have the skills to all of those to the skill level required. So you hire a few people and everyone pitches in. A couple of years later it’s no longer a Start-Up and you need to make changes to the structure to ensure that you can handle the growth.

At this stage, you need to think very carefully about how you go about this. Put the wrong people or structure in place and you could kill off your business. As a founder, you need to take a good look at your own skills and where they fit into the picture. You should also take a deep look at what you really like doing. Is your passion running the business or is it in research & development.

Depending on what you want to do you will need to hire someone who runs the R&D or the day to day business. Hiring the right kind of person is key to your success and then you need to let them get on with it. Losing control can be hard but if you don’t you will most likely fail. You also need to ensure that the team who has been working with you are able to embrace the changes you are making. You need to ensure they understand the need for the changes and that they support where you want to go next.

Talk to me if you would like to understand how to grow and scale your business in a sustainable way.