10 Steps for Growth…And the New Challenges it will Create

StartupNation recommends ten steps to help grow beyond the start-up mode:
1. Measure and Analyze Current Status
2. Get Efficient through Technology
3. Enhance Your Customer Experience
4. Cozy Up with Vendors
5. Maximize Your Niche, Expand to a New One
6. Develop New Channels
7. Acquire Growth Capital
8. Create a Culture
9. Ramp Up Awareness and Demand
10. Improve Sales Techniques
For each step they offer short articles and other resources to help apply these steps to a business.
Remember, however, that starting the growth process is only the first part of the process of moving your business ahead. Growth will create a new set of challenges:
1. Beware of the Growth Myth. Focus on growing profits, not sales! Too many entrepreneurs assume that profits always follow sales. This is not always the case. And even when profits do begin to follow sales, cash flow can lag even farther behind.
2. Vision Drift. Don’t lose your way. Stay focused on your core business. It may need to adapt and change, but these must be deliberate and planned choices.
3. Cultural drift. Managing the culture of your business is your job! If you don’t manage it, your culture will take on a life of its own, which is almost never a good thing.
4. Resource crises. Securing the fuel to support growth can be a constant strain…cash, staff, space, equipment, etc., etc.
5. Systems crises. The mundane and the complex all need development. From accounts payable to planning, all systems must be updated, enhanced, and made ready for growth.
6. Muddled structure. Make sure your structure makes sense for your strategy and your culture. We make small decisions on how to organize our employees that may make sense as we make them, but they may create an overall structure that can choke future growth and profits.
7. Disjointed strategies. Your business and your strategy need to be in harmony. All aspects of your business must be consistent and geared toward meeting customer needs and expectations.
Once the business begins to grow, both the entrepreneur and his business need to begin a transformation. If not properly managed, the entrepreneur can grow himself right out of business.
(Here is a link to a summary of all of the posts I have made about the challenges of growth).