Leading Your Business for Growth
For every five businesses springing up, only one cross the five-year survival threshold. This is mostly a case of not leading the business in the right direction. As a business owner seeking to position your SME for growth and sustainability, scaling profits while at it, what’s the missing factor you should leverage upon? Beyond having a product to sell and a queue of willing (or not) buyers, how do you ensure you are rightly placed for sustainability?
Managing a business requires that you are heavily invested in the happenings around your niche. You are expected to highlight your target audience, identifying the steps to meeting their needs. But as the business blooms, you may need to reorient your approach towards managing it.
You would agree that a difference exists between a company valued at one million naira and one valued at four million naira. Many businesses, inadequately equipped to navigate the demands that come with growth, struggle to evolve.
For many business leaders, the focus on survival robs them of giving thoughts to the in-depth structures required to scale up. In this case, survival is the system that ensures the momentary needs are met and momentary tasks are fulfilled.
A relatable scenario is an FMCG seller that is content with distributing in wholesales, without considering the possibilities of morphing into a depot. Owners of SMEs often find themselves battling the pesky disturbances imposed by several factors. Such factors include government (and governmental policies), unhealthy rivals, as well as a host of other factors that wane the desires for expansion.
A complacent business differs from an evolving, upward-moving company in its fundamental operational structures. Business owners eager for growth understand the need to transition from managing to leading the company. Effective leadership informed intuition, and a crop of honed talent are needful for business growth. If your business will evolve and sustain momentum, here are six factors you must align with:
Informed Decision Making
An organization with a knack for good judgment calls doesn’t struggle with quality, informed decisions. When a company has a system for making decisions – recognizing the essential need to solve problems with every call – then risks are minimized, and momentum is sustained. As an owner, you want to make certain that decisions tend towards proactiveness than being reactive.
This means that your team must be regularly updated about changes (subtle or pronounced) within the industry of operation, and must develop measures to approach these changes. Businesses that grow prepare themselves for every possibility, creating counters for inconveniences, and schemes for gaining from favorable updates. These decisions may require established protocols and a form of order communicated to every team member. The more consistent you are with leading using proactive measures, the easier it is to adapt towards growth.
Effective Leadership
Leading a business entails more than showing up early and barking instructions at staff and workers. Successful CEOs recognize the line between being a CEO and being a leader. What values do you communicate within your team? Are you a responsibility-taker or are you continually shifting blames?
There are certain skills that a business leader should possess. Great leaders, having been cast into the center of the circle repeatedly, have built immunities for pressuring situations. Does your team count on you to deal with stress? Do they trust you with the inevitable perplexities of running a business in the twenty-first century? Can you share conflicting opinions without being cynical? Sometimes leading a business viable for growth means disagreeing about a suggestion that seems most logical.
Crop of Talent
Your business would need people to grow. Businesses grow because people are committed to making it grow. Every aspect of leading a company involves people – the customers interface with your staff round-the-clock; ideas are proposed, developed and executed by humans; the people who work with you are the face clients and partners associate with your company.
Is your current squad structured to fill the right needs? Find people who are willing to grind with you, to dig their fingers in mud in the early days. Recognize their top skills, strengths, and weaknesses, and create systems that allow each function to maximum effectiveness. Employees appreciate an organization that acknowledges their efforts and rewards their involvements, so adopt reward systems that may (or may not) be monetary.
Desire to Grow
While desire itself isn’t substantial enough to catapult your business into the next phase, understand that desire isn’t wishful thinking. Often, companies interested in upscaling make no preparations for growth. If you find yourself shying away from risks-involved moves, then it’s time to reassess and evaluate.
The environment within which your company operates must encourage the sharing of ideas and ideals. Make mental lists of prospective partnerships, of possible ways to expand revenue stream and service reach. Encourage in-house collaborations, during which different departments can banter off ideas and observations. Sometimes the best criticisms come when in-house teams are set up to give each other friendly push, and every stage of growth involves some level of constructive criticism.
Identify Fitting Clients
A referral from a contented client carries within it the potential to attract a stream of clients. Identifying the clients that are healthy for your business isn’t just about the sales and conversions anymore. As a leader, you must recognize what clients are in agreement with your company’s core values and systems.
This may require you to adopt an introspective nature that sees not only the opportunities but also the potential loopholes. It would be best if you were interested in creating client-provider relationships that guarantee the business transits from being all about survival to sustaining momentum for growth.
Observe Competition
Competitions are good platforms for learning. Chances are a competitor is excelling at the next stage you’re driving your business to. Be open towards observing their methods, principles, and strategies. Please don’t be hesitant to approach them for advice, compare and contrast their approach to business as against yours.
Are there clues you’ve been misreading, and information you aren’t acting wholly upon? You should be mindful not to run every idea that worked for others without factoring the peculiarities of your own company.
You can easily sustain business growth when your company is instituted on reliable structures. Leadership that dares change an environment always reaching for expansion, the right blend of talents – all these are needful ingredients. With these in place, leading your business becomes easy. Thus, you can endlessly satisfy clients’ desires, thus edging you closer to ‘the promised land.’
