Slowly and Surely: How Can We Guarantee Our Business is Growing Properly?
When we look at the topic of business growth, the reality is that many organisations look at growth as something that should be done in the here and now. While business growth is a critical part of the success of your organisation, it’s so important to break down what it takes to grow in an organic manner. Here’s what you need to consider to make sure that you are growing your business properly.
Understand What is Important to You
So many organisations look at the concept of growth as being something that is either so far into the future or they have a very myopic approach where they want to get things done now. The problem with both of these viewpoints is that it doesn’t necessarily help you understand what is important to you.
Growth should be a by-product of you lining your ducks in a row, which is why it’s critical to have the right resources on board to help you gain a greater insight into the things that you should either be fine-tuning or creating to stimulate that sense of growth. Marketing agencies like Growth Agency can help businesses provide greater insight in terms of their marketing by looking at what tools they have or do not have in relation to their goals. When you start to consider what is important to you beyond more growth and more money, you will be able to develop in a more measured manner.
Understand the Best Options for You
The tortoise and the hare is such a commonly-used fable, but it is one that bears repeating in the modern world. If we want to go fast like the hare, we can easily run out of steam. This means that being the tortoise that actually knows where they’re going and is slowly putting one foot in front of the other will be able to gain a better understanding of that bigger picture.
When it comes to something like sales, you may think you need to grow rapidly by expanding into new markets around the world, but when you do this without understanding the impact of increased volumes you are going to stall at some point.
When you look at the best options for your growth, you should avoid wondering about the fastest way to get growth, but about finding something that helps you to keep stock of where you are and make those incremental improvements.
The 5% Rule
In exercising, there is a rule that as long as you slowly add a little weight to the bar or enough distance to your mileage, you are able to grow in an organic manner while not overreaching or fatiguing yourself. The 5% rule can be invaluable to any business that is struggling to make an impact. Conversely, you don’t want to be doing so little that you are not progressing at all. The goal is to expand but it’s about making sure that you add 5% of whatever is necessary to your proceedings.
It could be about getting 5% more quality leads in sales or about fine-tuning your working practices by 5%. Working smarter rather than harder is a very common adage, but when organisations try to pile on the workload they can benefit from utilising the 5% rule. This also takes into account the notion of Parkinson’s Law, that our work expands to fill the amount of time we have. Therefore, if you want to increase productivity by reducing the deadline by 5%, it can apply that little bit of pressure that forces people to motivate themselves more effectively.
Addressing the Culture
There are so many resources online about changing the internal culture but it’s important to recognise that if your business is stagnating, is it due to the fact that the culture is inadequate? As you grow, it’s important to make sure that new employees support the values of your business. This is why going back to the drawing board and understanding your business vision ensures your business culture is supported. When you see why companies fail in providing a supportive and nurturing culture, it can be because they’ve chased major growth rather than attempted to look after their own.
When you start to build your business slowly and surely, you get a greater understanding of the cultural components that can cause problems in the long run. Every new employee needs to come on board with a company’s values, but if your values become all about extreme profit, no matter the impact on employee well-being and self-esteem, you are going to see employees leaving your business in droves every few years. While it sounds simple in theory, when a culture is nurturing its employees, it helps them to stay on board during good times and bad. Ensuring it becomes part and parcel of what your business stands for is far more difficult to achieve but is vital.
Giving Your Business the Resources Needs to Thrive
Resources come thick and fast in any business, but you should make sure you know what you want to achieve first and foremost. Every company uses tech in one way or another, but we think that we need to cover so many diverse disciplines that only the latest and greatest technology will do. Instead, thinking about the technology that your business needs right now can ensure you do have a better understanding of scaling up in a more organic fashion.
When we look at the topic of growth, we can find ourselves sidetracked by a number of components that we think are pivotal to getting more profits. The problem compounds as businesses grow without having a major understanding of their vision.
Growth is tantamount to the success of your organisation, but you have to make sure that you are doing it in such a manner that you aren’t selling yourself short. When you start to chase the profits down any rabbit hole, are you going to run out of steam in a few years’ time?
Organic and steady growth is essential for this very reason because it doesn’t just allow you to develop in a more measured manner, but you can also gain so many other positives in terms of your organisational culture and your employees, and, ultimately, this is a far better approach for or any company to thrive in the long run.
*This is a collaborative post.
