Are you sabotaging your company’s growth and productivity without knowing?
‘No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit’
– Andrew Carnagie, Founder of US Steel Corporation
Do you feel that your company is stuck with numerous unresolved internal conflicts, reduced team performance and effectiveness and decline in entrepreneurial spirit?
Ambitious Founders/Business Owners found themselves in this situation when prioritising high growth while neglecting the need for evolving structure and processes. Ideally you would want to implement new technology, but you do not have the relevant and accurate information for quality decision making.
You will soon notice that the business is slowly outgrowing your capabilities and you need capable people to delegate to. If you have hired a ‘Professional’ Manager to help you, you might notice that he/she is not fitting in with the team.
In fact, the team does not want to even follow the new structures being put in place. At this stage several businesses offer stock options to their most trusted employees, as they know the company cannot afford losing them right now.
You are left with 2 choices now: either you hire a new person who will run things like you would or you let the board run the company themselves? Which one would you choose?
Recent studies shows that 44% of UK businesses started in 2011 had failed by 2014. Poor management was the leading cause of failure for 56% of those companies. It might not seem immediately obvious, but you might be the reason why the company is stuck!
Find out if you are unconsciously sabotaging your business’ growth by answering ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the statements below:
| Statements | Yes | No |
| 1 – Increasing sales, but profits do not follow the same steep upward trend | ||
| 2 – The same issues are discussed during meetings, but no definite solutions agreed/executed | ||
| 3 – Growing organisational politics, rumours and conflicts among the teams | ||
| 4 – The company’s rewards systems are ad-hoc | ||
| 5 – You are starting to worry about the employees’ morale and effectiveness | ||
| 6 – You have offered stock options to loyal and indispensable employees | ||
| 7 – You are lacking relevant information to make good decisions | ||
| 8 – Difficulty in finding a capable & trustworthy person to delegate to | ||
| 9 – You are thinking of either hiring someone who will do things the way you would or letting the directors run the company without you | ||
| 10 – If you have already hired someone to lead your troops: is the team rejecting his/her authority? | ||
| 11 – If you have decided to abdicate and let the directors run the company: are they spending too much time on controls and systems? |
Answering ‘Yes’ to the majority of the statements above shows you are currently facing the 3 common challenges typical at this stage of organisational development:
- Decentralisation of authority
- Change in leadership from Entrepreneurship to Professional Management
- Fundamental shift in the goals that drive performance
These issues may cause companies to find themselves trapped and prematurely aging, without achieving their potential. Profit might go up for some time, but sales will eventually start declining with the entrepreneurial and innovative sparks fading. It is your responsibility to spot the symptoms and either work on resolving them yourself or bring in experts to help before it’s too late. To grow into a successful mid-sized business, you will need to enable the company to run without you by:
- developing the leaders
- building high performance teams
- optimising systematisation and flexibility to capture the vision and the entrepreneurial spirit
Are you currently experiencing those challenges? Feel free to email us directly your answers to the statements and request a meeting with an expert!
> Request my free meeting and help me grow my business today! <
