Dramatic growth can happen for a number of reasons. Your new business is one of the 10% and is being rapidly adopted by your customers, or perhaps you’ve merged with another company and the combined skills or products of your new company are skyrocketing your sales.
Regardless of how your growth spurt started, you’ll be facing new challenges trying to keep things under control so here are 5 Tips To Manage A Fast Growing Business.
Create Policies and Procedures
One of the best things you can do for a fast growing business (or even a slow one for that matter) is created policies and procedures. We’re not talking about creating a plan for every little thing but more of a manual or guide so that you can bring new staff up to speed quickly.
Having procedures in place make training new staff much faster and ensure all staff is learning the same thing. Keeping everyone on the same page during company growth is essential because your time will be getting eaten up dealing with other matters.
Get the Right Systems in Place
It makes all the difference to have the correct systems in place during rapid growth. Make sure you’re using a line of business application that works for your company. Do you schedule employees? Do you go on-site to clients businesses? Do you provide support tickets to customers?
Look at the way you run your business and make sure you get software that has the necessary features to make your company run efficiently. You don’t want to be messing around with multiple software packages and cloud products slowing down staff productivity.
Ultimately you’ll want a single solution that meets all your needs. Wishful thinking I know, but make sure you do a lot of research in this area as changing down the road is always much harder.
Stay Organized
Yeah I know this is a broad statement. I cannot stress enough however the importance of keeping things organized in a rapidly growing workplace. This includes simple things like your work area. Making sure everything has a spot and areas are kept clean and tidy.
If you have a common area in your company like a stationary section, make sure this is very well laid out and organized. Make things easy to find for yourself and staff and keep supplies stocked.
Keeping things organized makes for greater efficiency. There’s nothing quite as frustrating as being in a hurry and not being able to find what you need quickly.
Hire Good People and Pay Them Well
I know as business owners we’re all trying to save money everywhere we can. Do yourself a favor and DON’T try to save on the people that are going to help run your business with you.
I’m not talking about paying the janitor $200k a year, but the key players in your business need to feel appreciated, like they are paid well and feel valuable. Here’s where I get people telling me it’s not always money that makes people feel like valuable members of the team. There of course is truth to this but simply put, non-monetary reimbursement just doesn’t pay the bills.
Always remember the ones who help you and your business grow to what it is today. Good work is hard to find and you don’t want to be in a position where you’re trying to cheap out with an employee that’s helped you build your business and survive your growth spurt. Do whatever you have to do, get rid of whatever you have to get rid of before you let valuable team members leave.
Keep a Strict Work Schedule
As a small business owner myself I know first hand the number of hats you need to wear and the time you have to spend making your business function. The problem is if you don’t set your working hours, people like us will just never stop working.
Accept the fact that in a growing business there will ALWAYS be things you can work on, improve, tweak, rebuild etc. If you ever do actually finish everything you need to do then be worried because a growing business has a never ending amount of tasks.
Remember the other important things in life like family, exercise, relaxing, socializing. You may feel these things take you away from what is most important, building a successful business so you can do all those things later right?
Part of owning and growing a business is the adventure of it. Enjoy the ride while it’s happening. Don’t feel you need to get everything done in a day or a week, or a month. It’s all part of the learning process and trying to accomplish everything too quickly will only burn you out and cause endless frustration. Check out my article on work life balance for more insight on this area.