What is the most powerful way to grow and scale a business successfully?
Mark Farrer-Brown
Strategy and Value Creation Expert | Chair | Non-Executive Director | Founder and CEO Coach | Mentor | Private Equity
What you will be doing as Founder CEO when the business has 100 employees will be very different to what you were doing when there were five of you around the kitchen table.
You won't know everyone in the company as intimately as you did when you were all in the same room. You are not going to be involved in every hiring or firing decision. Your founding employees are going to give you grief when they no longer get regular access to you.
You may feel that you are no longer doing the things you love doing or you may be relieved that you no longer have to do everything. You may not have managed a team before let alone a company with multiple teams. You may never have thought about how to grow and develop other people.?
Does this sound familiar?
As Marshall Goldsmith, the infamous business coach, said,?
?“What got you here, won’t get you there.”?
Q: What is the most powerful way to grow and scale a business??
A: Make the growth strategy about you.?
Most of the resources focused on growth strategy are about the business, not the founder. I propose it should be the other way around. If you, the CEO Founder, don’t scale yourself, your business won’t scale either. You will be the limiting factor or even the reason the business fails.?
If you are the right person to transform from founder to CEO you will need to intentionally figure out what needs to change to get you there. It may be skills development but, in my experience, the most impactful changes my clients notice are behavioural.?
The standout factor? Growth mindset.?
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Great CEOs are made not born, and so if you developed a growth mindset about learning then you stand a much greater chance of scaling up successfully.
Growth Behaviours
So which behaviours do you need to develop to maximise your and your company’s success? How would you rate your current capabilities in the following six growth behaviours?
1 = needs immediate intervention 5 = killing it
But here’s the twist. You are not always the best person to know which behaviours need development. I would also advise surrounding yourself with loving critics - colleagues, advisors, coaches - who know you well, have your best interests at heart and will be truthful about the feedback they give you.?
Lastly, there’s no shame if your passion and strengths are better suited to the ￡0-10 million business and not the ￡10-50 million business. But if the CEO isn’t going to be you, then you need to plan the succession.?
Drop me a message on LinkedIn and let’s chat about what this looks like for you and your business.
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I support Founders and Entrepreneurs to become thriving CEOs.
I help you close the gap between what you do now and what you are capable of doing, sharing my knowledge gained from 20 years+ of working alongside entrepreneurs.