Everyone wants to grow fast. But few people realize that he is the main killer of young companies. A business that was flexible and manageable yesterday suddenly begins to sink into chaos after a sharp jump in revenue. Orders are being lost, quality is falling, and the best employees are quitting. It will no longer be possible to manage such growth on the fly. A system overhaul is needed.
Growth sickness: symptoms and causes
Imagine a typical situation. A small manufacturing company finds its niche and "shoots". In a year or two, its turnover grows 5, or even 10 times - for example, from a conditional 20 to 100 million rubles. Victory? Not quite. It is at this point that the symptoms of "growth sickness", familiar to many, begin to appear.
· "Family" business vs. New team: What worked yesterday on the enthusiasm and personal relationships of the founders is no longer functioning. New people come to the team who are not "infected" with the general idea, and the "oldies" who are used to working "in their own way" are not ready for a systematic approach.
· The Old Guard vs. New tasks: Suddenly new management skills are required: planning, budgeting, quality control. And the team consists of excellent "performers", not "managers". They start to sabotage the changes because it breaks their familiar world.
· Customer flow vs. Chaos in sales: The old methods of "wrote in a notebook" or "replied in WhatsApp" no longer cope with the flow of applications. Deals get lost, customers wait weeks for a response, and the sales department turns into a "fire brigade."
· Volume growth vs. Drop in quality:
Without a well-established control system, an increase in production inevitably leads to an increase in defects and complaints. What worked in unit production fails on the flow.
In addition, other problems are snowballing. There is an urgent need for automation — Excel can no longer cope. Competitors are not asleep, and you need to constantly refine the product and expand the range, but there is no time or resources for this. And the increased customer base is beginning to require service — a new customer service is needed to support the installation and operation phase, which simply did not exist before. The owner understands that he alone can no longer carry everything on himself.
From chaos to the system: where to start rebuilding
The first mistake that is made in such a situation is an attempt to solve all the problems at the same time. It's just putting out fires. The right path begins with a cold and honest diagnosis. First of all, you need to look inside the company and find the main "bottlenecks". Where exactly are the applications lost? Why is the percentage of marriage increasing? What routine tasks take up 80% of the owner's time?
After that, look outside. Do you need to assess soberly whether there is a place in the market for your ambitious growth to a billion? Or have you already hit the "ceiling" of your niche? An analysis of competitors will show how they grow and where your weaknesses are. And only after collecting all this information, you can gather key employees and start a serious conversation. Without their involvement, any business growth strategy, even the most ingenious one, will remain just on paper.
This conversation is best conducted in the format of a strategic session. But not for show, but for real work. The goal is to agree on a single, understandable and measurable goal.
Not to "become a leader," but to "reach 1 billion in revenue in 3 years." Then, based on the audit, select the 2-3 most painful points that need to be "treated" first, for example, quality control and sales department. For these new tasks, a new organizational structure is being drawn, where positions such as sales director or head of customer service appear. And most importantly, as a result of this work, each draft of changes should have one specific responsible and clear deadline.
From plan to action: how to make the strategy work
The strategy session itself is just a starting point. The real work starts the next day, and that's where most good plans fail. In order for the strategy not to remain on paper, it is necessary to launch a mechanism for its implementation.
First of all,
Project teams are created for each priority area (sales, quality, etc.), headed by designated responsible persons. Their task is to turn common goals into concrete steps.
Secondly, and most importantly, a new management "rhythm" is being introduced in the company. These are regular, for example, weekly, short meetings of the strategic committee (the owner and project managers). They do not discuss turnover, but only progress on strategic objectives.: What was done in a week? What problems have you encountered? What are we planning for the next one?
This approach allows you to constantly keep your finger on the pulse, help "lagging" teams and correct actions in time if something does not go according to plan. Scaling a company is not a one—time leap. It's a marathon consisting of hundreds of small, consistent, and controlled steps. And success here does not depend on brilliant ideas, but on systematic, almost boring, daily work to implement changes.
Developing a business growth strategy is just the beginning of the journey. The most difficult thing is to implement it in an ever—changing market. How to properly adjust the "rhythm" of the work of the project teams? What metrics should I use for monitoring? How to motivate the "old guard" that resists change? We analyze these practical and managerial issues using real-world cases in our Telegram channel.
