On Internet Business

Scaling your business

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Entrepreneur Resources, Leadership

Robert Craven has an interesting think-piece in Real Business, exploring the balancing act that’s required to master the relationship between planning and delivery in a small or new enterprise.

His point is that the problem is rarely a poor plan. It’s usually some kind of impediment to delivery because the organisation isn’t balanced in its structures and the weighting given to different aspects of management. In other words, the love and affection that most entrepreneurs lavish on their creations is misplaced – they work in the business rather than on the business and instead of making scalable businesses using systems, they make successful start-ups that then resist scaling upwards precisely because of their initial construction.

There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence that suggests many entrepreneurs actually have to move away from their business (willingly or unwillingly) during the scale-up process. Quite a few return when it’s over, but it seems the skills that make an entrepreneur may not be those that make a business grow from SME to large enterprise. ‘Systems, processes and controls’ says Craven and those are often dirty words to the streamlined, workaholic, visionary founder.

So finding space to deliver—even if the delivered item/idea/service is less than absolutely perfect—is vital to longevity. That means moving away from planning and perfecting and into the grittier business of meeting deadlines, consistency and reliability. A balancing act that allows for growth.

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