Plan for Growth
The Elements of Growth:
A SWOT Analysis for Growth:
If you do not have all the above going for you, determine how to get it by gathering your management team and analyzing each area of your company for strengths and weaknesses: marketing, sales, production, technology, human resources, customer service, etc.
Strengths (Internal to Organization)
Weaknesses (Internal to Organization)
Opportunities (External Environment)
Threats (External Environment)
Flatten Your Organization — Improve Communications — Delegate
The flat organization.
As they grow, organizations find that they can benefit by decentralizing into semi-autonomous units (i.e. Toyota Management System) that manage individual plants, products, lines of business with parallel support operations for human resources, purchasing, and so on. Perhaps you are a five person shop, but nevertheless, the same ideal of cross-functional teams can lead to better efficiency than under an all powerful leader. Provide your managers with autonomy to make decisions within the parameters of the organization’s mission, goals, and strategy.
Communications are key.
Removing the barriers to communication are more likely in a flatter organization. Information flows more easily across self-managed units with some degree of cross-functional individual responsibility. In this way, knowledge sharing, flexibility, and speed of response to change are maximized.
Delegate.
Growth is not possible if you (the business owner or entrepreneur) are still doing everything. One of the most necessary skills of management is delegation. Take your delegating to the next level
This is not an exhaustive list — your analysis will uncover many others.