What Is Holding Your Company Back? | Growing Your Business

Growing Your Business

You started this company from scratch, with an idea on the back of a napkin. Working your tail off, you broke 1 million in revenue, then 3 million and 5, and maybe even as high as 7 million dollars a year. It’s clear that you have done well for yourself, but growing your business isn’t going as planned.

It seems like you have tried everything. You made sure that your staff has the right equipment, the best technology. You moved everyone into a brilliant new office and provided them with the best tools and technology. At first, incentives and bonuses were a motivating factor, allowing you to get the most out of your people. But lately, those incentives seem to have turned into entitlements.

Transitioning From Manager to Leader

All of your peers have told you that to grow your business you need to get yourself out of the day-to-day operations. It’s time to start working ON your business, not IN your business. So, you hired what you believe to be energetic, smart people to manage the day-to-day tasks within the company. However, even these people do not seem to have made much of a difference. Wondering if you made a mistake in hiring these managers, you reach out to a consultant to find the solution.

How a Consultant Can Help

This pattern is so similar for most of the entrepreneurs who have reached out to us looking for solutions. The first thing we do is initial research, and then interviews with the founder, and with key leaders and the long term employees. We then use this information to create a personalized methodology for growing your business, to help you break through barriers and move forward. We create a plan that reengages the staff, and helps with the transition from manager to leader, so that your organization can grow to the next level.

The entire company needs:

• Communications training
• Support to build a team out of a cross-functional workgroup

At the management level, the programs include:

• Training and coaching for the new manager
• Turn the manager into a leader

For executives, the process includes:

• Strategic planning
• Goal tracking and accountability software

Growing Your Business Means Change at Every Level

The founder is not exempt from this process. While he or she typically hires us to “fix the people,” the fact remains that the founder must also transition. Just the notion of, “working on your business,” is not enough. To let others take the reins in the business, and make the transition from manager to leader a reality, founders will need to have the proper tools and insight.

If you think about it, being a founder is much like being a parent. You gave birth to this company. You nurtured it, and you were the one who had to do it all. But now your friends think you should just let go, and allow other people to, “raise your child.” That’s easier said than done! Almost every founder I have worked with understands this analogy, and the difficulty of this situation.

Moving Your Business Forward

Building a company does feel like starting a family. Turing your children over to their kindergarten teachers, their first loves, and sending them off to college are all difficult times in a parent’s life.  For a founder, that scenario sounds a lot like hiring the first manager, creating separate departments, and working ON your business instead of IN the business.

In the family situation, where do you go for advice? Typically, most of us go to our peers first. We can commiserate with them, and find some satisfaction in the understanding that we are not alone, because others feel like this too. Yet even with that satisfaction, we don’t often find many solutions. Next, we tend go to our parents, or to some other older mentor figure. We look to someone who has gone through this, and come out the other side even happier. When growing your business, the process is not so different. Look to trusted mentors or coaches for advice, so that you can transition from manger to leader, and move your business forward.