Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Entrepreneurial Businesses

growth puts you into a different competitive space.

the challenge is for the entrepreneur to increase the probability that others will do the tasks as he or she would like them done. To accomplish this goal, the entrepreneur implements processes.

Process implementations are intended to produce standardization, consistency, and reliability and reduce variance and risks. Process improvement is an ongoing job for a growing business.

The second type of process has a goal of producing reliable, timely data, or feedback that will reveal variances or mistakes.

“You don’t eat if you don’t sell. You don’t sell if you don’t have a customer. You don’t have a customer if you don’t offer a good service.

Growth Decision Template 1. Why should we grow? 2. How should we grow? 3. How much should we grow? 4. How fast should we grow? 5. Do we have the right people, processes, and controls in place to support growth? 6. What are the risks of growth? 7. What are the risks of not growing? 8. Do the benefits of growth outweigh the risks? 9. How do we manage

Complexity theory states that growth is an experimental learning process.11 Experimental means that you test ideas and see whether they work. In this context, learning means that you will need to adapt and change based on feedback as you try things.

in many cases growth requires different people, processes, and controls than those that a business has in place.

Others focused on identifying and remedying bottlenecks. They created flow charts showing each critical step in the process of generating cash—the lifeblood of a business. They thought of the flow chart as a pipeline or funnel and monitored flows to determine where there were bottlenecks or flow delays. Finally, they focused on the bottlenecks and,

4. Understand that business growth usually requires more people, more processes, more controls, and more administration. Growth changes everything including the business culture.