As an entrepreneur, you have a vision and you’ve taken steps to realize that vision in the form of your own company and a set of products and services.
When you started your business, your vision permeated everything you did. You were immersed in a mindset that enabled you to apply, adapt, innovate, negotiate, and persevere in order to realize it.
As your business gains traction, consider what mindset you need in order to make your company grow. It is critical that you shift your focus from your products to the people charged with manifesting your vision on an ongoing basis – those who conduct your sales, marketing, administration, systems, staffing, and finances.
Many entrepreneurs lose sight of this. Having started their businesses with little or no help, they continue to rely on themselves to fulfill a full range of responsibilities. While there is good reason for this at first, over the long term, this poses significant risks.
The Entrepreneurial Vision. It is the entrepreneur’s role to drive the company’s vision. Indeed, if the entrepreneur does not keep that vision vibrant, no one in the company will. This is not just a motivational strategy. Your mind creates reality – if you don’t first envision your impact on your audience, community, and world you will never take those first steps to realize it. When you hire and manage properly, most day-to-day tasks can be resolved by others; it is essential for you to maintain the cognitive space so that the full scope of your vision can be clearly communicated internally and externally on a regular basis.
Formalization & Scalability. During the initial stage of starting up, it is essential for the founders to be innovative and nimble. But once you start to grow, there is a measure of predictability that your customers will demand. By documenting and optimizing processes, you can increase productivity while maintaining high customer satisfaction levels. Your business will become scalable, and you can focus on aspects of your vision that only you can pursue.
People Development & Morale. Delegating tasks is not just a matter of freeing yourself for other things. It serves to develop the capacity of your staff which will in turn create excitement about your vision. Empowered staff will produce better, will be attentive to results, engage their own creativity towards problem solving, and will work with better morale.
The challenge entrepreneurs face when growing is to shift their mindset from the initial focus on launching a product or service to managing and motivating people to carry out a clearly defined vision. Achieving this entails a focus on people – hiring, training, brainstorming processes, reporting, monitoring performance, and creating leadership opportunities. Once you do this, your products and services will be delivered by the very best talent invested in your vision.
Fortunately, you don’t have to pursue all of this alone. Patricia Rattray, principal of New Revenue Consulting has been helping small businesses grow since 2016, and would be glad to offer you a free initial collaboration to discuss the growth challenges you face.