Once your start-up begins to taste success it’s time to think bigger and scale up. This is not a time to rush and you should take the proper time to evaluate, restructure, and refocus your team for the next step.
Here are some top tips to keep in mind for what to embrace and what to avoid as you expand your business out of its initial phase.
Systems Scale, People Don’t
You’re only one person, and so is everyone else in your company. Neither you nor they will be able to take on the complex and myriad tasks associated with growing to higher and higher levels of success as you need to hire more people for both old and new tasks. As you do so, there runs the risk of massive miscommunications and unnecessary corrections as lack of control or instruction leads to inconsistent work and management headaches.
To avoid this nightmare, you need to develop systems and protocols for people to refer to instead of making mistakes or hammering down your door with questions. Invest the time in making good documents on different policy areas for your company, position requirements, and communication chains. Select the right software for organizing files, storing data, project management, and communication. They are well worth the time and headache they save you.
Stop Doing Everything Yourself and Trust People
As your company grows you will find yourself burdened with new tasks that no longer allow you to micro-manage. Doing so can be absolutely suicidal for your business and you need to lay the groundwork for others to manage in your place. You should have this future need in mind from the moment you start your company and begin nurturing your current employees to take on more managerial and directorial positions in time, but it is essential to do so when you are scaling if you have not already. Form a good relationship with those you see potential in and invest the time and patience to teach them how to come into your own. They will form the glue of your future business.
Think Bigger or Die Smaller
As things come together and growth picks up faster than you imagine, it can be a heady and overwhelming experience. You may come to feel like success has been realized and give into the temptation to rest on your laurels. Plenty got rich that way, few stayed rich that way. At every level your business reaches, begin to eye the next; cautiously at first but with greater ferociousness and energy as you near it.
Stay Critical and Avoid Vanity Metrics
As obvious as this sounds, there are a million things that will pop up that can easily appear to be important or measure success when they don’t do so in the least. These are called vanity metrics because they ‘confirm’ success and self-satisfaction when business owners should be seeking out gaps in their strategy and testing everything in the most effective way. Perhaps your company has had a video go viral and garner widespread shares over the internet for example, but are those who shared your video for its humor or poignancy likely to be interested in buying your product or service? Testing, and in many forms, is needed before you can pat yourself on the back.
Location and access
For an online company, this isn’t so important but for a customer or client facing business this decision is critical.
It is important that the needs of your customers, as well as staff are considered. With no customers you have no business and an unappealing location can make recruiting difficult or it may mean paying over the odds to secure and retain employees.
Public transport links, accessible parking and even local amenities such as cafe’s and coffee shops are important when choosing office space.
Another important aspect to consider is the size of your business space.
Although you can’t predict the future if your business plan includes expansion, try to avoid being locked into a long term lease that will not cater for this. Serviced offices can provide a good solution in the early days when expansion or even downsizing plans are uncertain.
Create the Right Structure and Populate the Right Teams
Things are quite simple in the beginning stages of business development with just a handful of employees, but with more people comes more complexity and more interpersonal and communication problems. You need to ensure that hierarchy and communication become hallmarks of your company culture. Create different teams for the key tasks facing your growing company and ensure that the right communication channels (via managers and feedback structures) are created with them to avoid creating silo teams where no one communicates or pays attention to the business as a whole.
Don’t make the mistake of making teams too large where confusion and argument can cripple their purpose. And take your time to find the right fits for your first expansion of staff. Mis-hires are costly, and for companies at a crucial growth stage, one too many can still be fatal.
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