Growth is a key objective for all businesses, but it is one thing attaining it and quite another knowing what to do with it. If you have ever looked after a business as it goes through a drastic period of growth, you will know just how destabilising it can really be. It takes a lot of focus and concentration to be able to keep the business in one piece during scaling. What you need during those times is adaptability, and there are a few key ways in which you should aim to adapt your business as it scales up.
Upgrade IT Systems
Your business is only as workable as its worst IT system. If you are scaling up, you need to make sure that your systems are actually capable of working within that newfound scale as best as possible. There are a lot of things to think about here, but if you are in any doubt, you simply need to ensure that you upgrade those troublesome systems as soon as possible. It’s always wise to hire a professional IT team to help you decide on this or to use your own in-house IT team if you have one.
Focus On Your OKRs
Because it can be tough to know where to place the balance of your focus, it helps to have a model for understanding this. One such model that is becoming especially popular in business right now is Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). By placing the necessary attention on these elements, you are going to be much more likely to know what needs to change in your business in order for it to survive. With the right OKR training, you and your staff should all be able to make use of this useful tool in the best way possible.
Build The Network
Networking is one of those elements that are important at more or less every stage of a business's lifespan. So whatever new size you are finding your business to be, you should aim to build and continue to build the network as best as you can. With a larger network comes more opportunities of all kinds, and that means you have more of a chance to actually properly survive the scale that your business is becoming. So, build your professional network at all times if you want to continue to purchase over the company as it grows.
Take a look at all of the processes you have in your business as you scale, and make sure that you are working to keep them as simple as possible. The simpler they are, the more likely it is that you will be able to manage them properly. If you don’t keep them simple, they will become unwieldy and unmanageable with each increased spurt of growth. It is always better to keep things simple, but it’s not necessarily always easy, so you might have to focus on this to make it happen. However, you will find it is worth it.