Structuring a business for growth must be the number one priority of every leader. With this in mind, there are a few rules one can follow in building for scale from the moment they start their company.
Document Everything:
Every data point is a learning opportunity that most organization miss. It is therefore necessary to keep track of how things are done, contacts, customers, tools used, and so on. Documentation is a measure of an organization’s capacity to communicate information internally and it is key to the success of most large organization.
Foster Leadership:
To create distinct business units which operate without your direct involvement you need to create a culture of empowerment and leadership, even if that includes some failure and waste. Easy heuristics for this are to give recommendations not commands, and feedback based on growth and learning, not punishment or control. Use profiling tools like Enneagrams to understand your leaders and insights from behavioural tracking to understand why they think the way they do, and where the opportunities for their growth are.
Systemize Your Processes:
Most new founders start by sprinting at whatever idea or problem seems the most pressing and became firefighters, rather than commanders, within their business. Start with a system like Disciplined Entrepreneurship or Designing For Growth and let it guide you through the process of starting your venture. Once you’ve learned enough to lose the “training wheels” so to speak, then develop your own structured system, that new hires can be easily on-boarded onto and that encompasses the flexibility innovative firms require.
Imbue Your Values:
It’s easy to think of the founder’s personality as defining an organization’s culture but that’s only the case when founders imbue the processes and structures of the company with what they value. For instance, if you value innovation but have tight budgets and deadlines with no flexibility you’ll find people only seek to meet the minimum because of their restraints. If you don’t imbue the way your company works from the very beginning with your values, vision, and mission you’ll find it scales away from you.
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