“We are struggling to grow the business…”

“…and take it to the next level”

Building a successful business is no mean feat. Of course, along the way, there are always hurdles to overcome.

Sometimes the barriers are obvious, more sales are needed or bigger premises are required.  However, sometimes the barriers to growth are not so apparent.

Are you sure you know what is preventing you obtain the success you desire?  Typical ‘complaints’ are:

• The business is stuck at a certain level of profit and turnover
• There’s a fear of how the business can be scaled while keeping the company culture
• Staff are disillusioned and frustrated, and there is low staff morale
• We are concerned we may be putting the business at risk
• We fear we will lose engagement with staff.

None of these are problems. They are symptoms of a deeper problem or problems. These fall into two categories:

• functional problems
• personal and interpersonal problems.

Functional problems arise from a failure to recognise and address the changing needs of the business as it grows, or even as it simply changes to meet external factors. Usually, changes need to be made and usually they are not made early enough, resulting in problems before the changes are implemented and unnecessary difficulty implementing them.

Related material:
>  A short piece about problems
>  Business life cycle
>  Moving into maturity

Personal and interpersonal problems can show up in many ways: stress, (lack of) motivation, apathy, (more or less overt) conflict, and even guilt and shame. Once again, these are symptoms of deeper issues.  

Often, it is necessary to recognise that the business is not moving forward because it is being held back.  No amount of doing things designed to get the business to move forward will be successful until the reasons why it is being held back are dealt with.

The fact that noone is aware of holding the business back doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.  A successful intervention has to start from this premise.  If the premise turns out to be wrong in a specific case, that will become quickly apparent.

Related material:
>  Stages of personal development—1 The basics

by Jeremy Marchant . © 2014 Jeremy Marchant Limited . updated 10 june 2015 . image:  Free images