It’s a dream come true (and a relief) when you start a business and it’s an instant success. When success comes quickly, fast-growing businesses end up juggling a lot at the same time: a flood of new business, growth in staff numbers, compliance matters and much more.
For example, when MYOB started out in 1991 from a home office they had one big idea – to create affordable tools that made business life easier. Business growth was rapid as no one had ever made accounting easy for non-accountants before. Now, they have helped over one million businesses in Australia and NZ.
Here are a few considerations for managing fast business growth.
Customer reigns supreme
When it all feels overwhelming, remember a positive customer experience is at the heart of every successful business. This would’ve been an important element of your business right from the start and a contributor to your current business success.
Get back to business basics
As your business grows, the more elements it will have – more staff, more operations, more products and well, more everything. With growth, many entrepreneurs find they can’t answer some basic business questions such as revenue, cash flow, BAS, and forecasts and you need to think long-term.
Think long-term
A common weakness among start-ups is only focusing on the day-to-day business activities, at the expense of tasks that will build the company over the long-term. Spend some quality time working on your business. Catch up with business advisors for valuable advice on areas such as return on investment, cash flow management, employment relations, benchmarking and so on.
Communicate with staffers
With rapid growth come changes in procedures and policies for staff. They’re likely to roll with the punches better if you inform them ahead of time. Let them know how the changes benefit existing staff, and what it means for the future. Ask them for feedback/questions to help ease the transition.
Create and sustain positive culture
A positive constructive workplace culture is an important element of business growth. Culture binds your employees together and a happy workplace has tremendous productivity benefits, and can also enhance the quality of products and services your company provides.
Remember your mission and vision
In times of chaos, it can help to remember your company’s mission and vision. A mission is a statement of why an organisation exists. A vision is a set of ideas that describe a future state and ideally drive constant learning and innovation. This will help you stay on course.
Rapid growth can be challenging if those at the helm don’t know how to manage it and channel the growth into positive business outcomes. Growth usually means more availability to resources, more capital, and greater visibility.
It’s very exciting when it all starts to fall in to place so enjoy the ride and celebrate your success.
