If you’re like a lot of us business owners, the pandemic exposed some vulnerabilities:
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- Overnight I couldn’t pay make payroll or rent
- Revenue took a nose dive and cash flow went out the window
Or the opposite, increased demand for your product, but still, vulnerabilities:
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- Our systems and structures weren’t sophisticated enough to handle the increased demand
- Leadership wasn’t nimble enough to predict and delegate a new way of doing things
With reopenings in full swing, now the focus is small business growth. Right now, the old adage, “if you’re not growing, you’re dying” is more fitting than ever.
So how do we get back to the business of growth?
Most business owners started out doing what they deliver, the do-ers of what you do. Veterinarians see patients, plumbers plumb… When your business is small it has a small number of functions, everything is easier to control. But as you grow complexity explodes! Things become increasingly complicated. You begin to need more functions from HR to product development to financial reporting to more managers, more staff, more suppliers and on and on. It becomes impossible for the business owner to do it all. Suddenly, you hit a critical point of complexity. The rules change as the business grows. What worked before won’t keep working in the future.
In fact, when small business growth doubles, complexity increases 12 times! That’s according to Verne Harnish in his book Scaling Up (p. 25).
To “scale up” your small business, Harnish says you must focus on 3 deliverables:
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- Reduce by 80% the time it takes the top team to manage the operational activities
- Refocus the senior team on market-facing activities
- Realign everyone else on to the same page
If you achieve these 3 deliverables, Harnish says you’ll double the rate of cash flow and triple the industry average profitability… and make it enjoyable for employees, customers, and you.
In our June 25 quarterly Growth Plan Workshop, we’ll discuss how to scale up to achieve the small business growth you want. We’ll talk about how to overcome Verne Harnish’s 3 barriers to scaling up:
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- Leadership: the inability to grow leaders who can delegate and predict
- Scalable infrastructure: the lack of systems to handle the complexities in communication and decisions that come with growth
- Market dynamics: the failure to address the competitive pressures that increase with your small business growth
In addition to a book discussion on Verne Harnish’s Scaling Up, by the end of 6 or 7 hours you can have all the necessary components of a small business growth plan for your company sketched out… and all on a single sheet.
Your Single Sheet Action Plan insures that you reduce the amount of time your leadership team takes to manage your business and focuses them on market-facing activities. Plus it gives you a document around which you can align everyone else in your business.
Attend alone, bring your 2nd in command, or bring your whole senior team and join this growing group of small business owners who religiously update their Single Sheet Action Plans each quarter.
If you’re not growing you’re dying… it doesn’t mean you have to get bigger (unless you want to). It does mean that your small business growth must be the right kind of growth, scaled in a deliberate and incremental process.
Click here to register for Inspire Results Business Coaching’s quarterly
Growth Plan Workshop
Thur., Sept 24th, Holiday Inn Indianapolis Airport, 8555 Stansted Dr., Indpls 46241
(Click here to see photos of the socially distanced room seating. Also know that lunch will be served following safety guidelines)
Our coaches will spend one-on-one time with you, ask you the right questions, and give you the advice you need to walk away with a completed Single Sheet Strategic Operating Plan and a 90-day Action Plan.
Stay well!
P.S. Join Inspire Results’ “Back to Business Roundtable” – an online 1-hour meeting every Friday at 9am. It’s an informal time for small business leaders to discuss and share ideas about current challenges.
