Hiring Is About More Than A CV.

How are you and how is your week going? I was thinking about this recently - scaling your SME is simple but I think we can often confuse simple with easy. Like anything exceptional, scaling requires effort. At Simple Scaling, we’re here to enable you to scale with purpose through our 10 ‘simple’ scaling principles - fundamental truths that underlie every scaling success that when followed, and applied, work. Simple… but not easy.

Scaling a business can be a wonderful journey, which is why each week, we help you navigate the scaling mysteries by sharing:

3 Scaling Tactics

2 Leadership Lessons

1 Reflection Question

Let’s get straight into it! Should take under 3 minutes to read.

3 Scaling Tactics

1) Utilise Waitlists

All scaling businesses are ideas factories with a focus on innovation (and I’m sure that’s something that you’re already doing), but how do you know whether or not to follow through on those new ideas?

Well, Daniel Priestley recently shared an effective way to test the waters when you’re thinking of launching something new…

Create a waitlist!

It serves as a great way of mitigating the ‘investment risk’ to gauge if enough people are actually interested in your latest proposition. Allowing you to more accurately assess whether it’s worth going all in on.

The best part? You can set the deadline of official launch for whenever you want, giving you & your team enough time to execute.

Are you leveraging the power of waitlists in 2025?

2) Innovation Requires Discipline

When business leaders think about scaling a business, they consider many components e.g. their product or service aligned to the customer’s wants and needs, the market potential, their processes and systems….often overlooking the most important aspect…building their team. It’s obvious but always worth repeating, if you want to scale, you’re going to need great team leaders.

Focus on cultivating a core group of great leaders whether thats through developing leaders from your existing team, or bringing in talented leaders, you need to ensure you have that core leadership in your business. People who are invested in your Vision and have the competency to execute on your collective plan.

So invest in your current team.

Invest in the skills they need to become great leaders.

And in turn you will attract even more great leadership talent.

And before you know it, you’ll have a core leadership group that are ready to aid & drive forward your company’s scaling journey. You don’t build a business, you build People and people build the business.

3) Culture Is Created Through Values

Can you answer ‘Yes’ to the following question? The answer may hold the key to why you’re not achieving scale. Do you have processes and systems that drive repeatable, predictable and sustainable results?

If the answer is ‘No’, then your scaling efforts will almost certainly fail or at best cause unnecessary stress.

Often, what is required, is to slow down in order to speed up. As an old swim coach of mine used to say to me, ‘stop fighting with the water, remember slow is smooth and smooth is fast’! Take the time to build robust processes and systems. Create a culture where your team are invested in those processes and get excited about creating and improving them

2 Leadership Lessons

1) Hiring Is About More Than A CV

I asked David Coulthard a simple question: “What characterises Christian Horner, team principal and CEO of Red Bull Racing, as a wonderful leader?”

David answered, "Christian is a racing driver at his core. This is what makes him passionate about the sport, curious about team building and getting the people dynamic right."

David reassured that finding qualified people with the right CV isn’t the challenging part. It’s building a Team with those people where the real challenge lies.

”Because a team is when you’ve got a group of individuals who’ve a willingness to take responsibility.”

Communicating an inspiring Vision will attract great people, to that there is no doubt. Building a Team with those People is where real leadership comes to the fore.

2) Don’t Be The Bottleneck

One of the most common downfalls I see in leaders that are attempting to scale is the failure to delegate tasks & responsibilities. The fear of letting go!

As a leader with aspirations to scale, you need to understand that you won’t be able to do all the things you were doing before you started your scaling journey. You WILL need to delegate tasks & responsibilities so you have the capacity to tackle new responsibilities and tasks that come with scaling.

So don’t be the bottleneck that stops your business from scaling. Learn to let go and empower other team members to take on these tasks & responsibilities.

1 Reflection Question

For this weeks reflective question, let refer back to point one of the leadership lessons:

Are you looking at more than a CV when you are hiring? Are you considering if they are a good fit for your team & vision? Do they display the right characteristics? Do they show a willingness to take responsibility?

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I hope you have enjoyed this week’s 321 newsletter!

If you enjoyed this or found it helpful, why not share it with a friend?

And remember, complex fails. Simple scales.

Take Care,

Brendan