Demystifying Growth

#Growth is the #business world Holy Grail. Or is it?

Have you set down with yourself (and your partner/s, team, friends - whoever you trust to have your best interest at heart) and figured out what will make you happy?

As a default, every business owner wants to see their business grow but not all of them can say to what size, and what will it mean for them when the business actually gets there.

I start with this because I have repeatedly witnessed what happens when a business owner chases growth for the sake of growth, only to have a complete meltdown when the business does. The meltdown was not because they could not manage the growth (I was there to help them). It was because this was not what they really wanted. They were chasing someone else's ambitions.

Therefore, the first step in thinking about business growth is to figure out what you really want, and what it implies in terms of stress and pressure.

Once we've got this out of the way it's time to look at other growth myths:

1. A business plan is enough - well, it isn't. The reason is that a business plan is usually written when the business is just an idea, mostly prompted by the need to open a bank account, apply to an incubator, and/or get finance. As important as it is for any of these purposes, it is no more than a set of assumptions, analyses, and hopes. It lacks any execution element and it usually doesn't take long for reality to kick in and the business plan to be forgotten in a drawer.
2. #Strategic #plans are for corporates - this myth is based on the assumption that strategic plans are best left to expensive consultants, therefore are unfeasible to SMEs. In fact, the best way to create a strategic plan is internally, by the organisation's (leadership) team.
3. Strategic plans are for 10-15 years - this was indeed the case when the world was revolving slower (sometime in the 20th century) but what plan can still be relevant for 10 years (or even five for that matter) in this day and age? While keeping an eye on the organisation's ultimate goal, a plan should focus on no more than 3 years. Sometimes even that is too long.
4. Strategy is for the top brass - while the name suggests it (strategos [στρατηγ??] is a military general in Greek), and indeed as was the case in the past, leaving strategy to the top management is one of the reasons it usually fails (globally, only 1 out of 3 strategic plans succeed). A strategic plan is just the beginning of a growth process. If not implemented, the planning is just a waste of time, and the top management can't implement it by themselves. If, however, the organisation's team was not involved in creating the plan, why would they be committed to it? The plan becomes just another list of items on their to-do list, often pushed aside when more urgent tasks are added.
5. The work is done when the board approves the plan - it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise how silly that is but in reality this is what usually happens. Strategic plans tend not to have any execution element in it, not to mention any follow-up, and they end up in a drawer.

To summarise, strategic plans (when there even exist) mostly fail because they are expensive, external, long-term, and lack an execution element.

This also points to the direction of how to make them work:

1. DIY - do not live your strategy to strangers who will go away and leave you to deliver it.
2. Involve your team - my advice is to include in the process anyone in the organisation who might contribute. Remember - if you exclude someone from planning they will exclude themselves from the execution.
3. Focus on short term - John Mynard Keynes famously said that "in the long run we all die". What he meant was - focus on the here and now. There is no point in planning for the far future as no one knows what it holds.
4. Execute - there is no point in spending time planning and then doing nothing (or very little) with it. Select what you can feasibly do in the next 12 months, break it down to quarterly chunks and weekly tasks, and review every week. Failing to do this will see the best plan turn into dust.