Do You Have What it Takes to Run a High Growth Business?

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There is a lot of interest these days about growth in the economy and providing support for high growth businesses. The latest is the Growth Accelerator Programme, and the objective of this initiative is to drive employment growth; and this is based on one key statistic. That is high growth (read 20%+ per annum growth) businesses represent roughly 5% of all companies but drive about 50% of all employment growth.

As the economy remains sluggish, more and more focus is going to be placed on these companies as they are our best chance of dragging ourselves out of the economic doldrums we find ourselves in. Being a high growth business is not easy in fact its a challenging environment in which to live. There are none the less a lot of ambitious business owners who would like to have a high growth business.

So what are the key things to have in place to give yourself the best chance of making it as a high growth business?

The first thing is ambition, no ambition, no growth it's about as basic as it gets.

With ambition comes the drive and the will to change things and to take that step into the unknown.

Having some sort of vision for your business. Its great if you can articulate it clearly and succinctly. A colleague of mine says that if you can't describe your business (why you do what you do) in 10 seconds there you don't understand it enough. I'm not sure I entirely agree as I have met many high growth business owners who are somewhat surprised to themselves heading such businesses. Nevertheless knowing where you are going and why you are going there will provide a focus to your activities

Third is leadership. The ability to inspire others be they your staff or customers. You act as a lightning rod for their ambitions and desires and so carry them forward. Even when things look dark and foreboding people will follow you as you can convince them that this is the right way. You create loyalty amongst your staff and customers which is necessary to underpin long term high growth.

Fourth and lastly at least in my book is Management. The high growth environment is relentless is its pursuit of weaknesses in a business. To survive and be successful you need to have the talent in your management team to take the business forward. This is particularly relevant as the business owner will become more and more remote to the business detail as it grows and will become increasingly reliant on his management team to deliver the goods.   

This list is by no means exhaustive but these, are for me at least, the key attributes that a company needs to be successful as a high growth business. What do you think?

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Exigent Consulting provides specialist services for High Growth Businesses, Business Turnaround, and Mentoring to the Small and Medium Business. We help business owners improve the profit performance of their business. 

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Managing High Growth: Using Your Culture for Competitive Advantage

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In my earlier piece about the importance of culture in high growth businesses I talked about how culture is considered a soft skill and that most business people tend to ignore it, mostly because there is no imm

Aleutian Cultures (Photo credit: Travis S.)

ediate quantifiable benefit and of course because it involves dealing with people. That's for HR people isn't it?

What I wanted to share in this post was the idea that culture can be a potent weapon by giving you an important competitive advantage. If implemented and understood it can help significantly in promoting a company's growth. Your culture establishes how your company and its staff interact with one another and with the outside world (your customers and prospects). It reflects your core values and your ethics.

So how is this a competitive weapon? Well lets look at two areas where High Growth Businesses experience problems. Finding and keeping the right staff and dealing with new problems. 

All high growth businesses face many challenges which are outside the experience of the owners or the senior staff. There is naturally a high degree of risk involved in making decisions in this environment. However as a business owner you don't want to be the only person who makes these decisions and by getting your staff to face these issues it in turn develops their skills. In order for your staff to be confident about making these decisions you must have the right culture in place. That is firstly to allow them to make decisions and not be afraid of making mistakes; and secondly a culture which support risk management so decision making can be shared across the management team and moves away from blaming individuals. Having the kind of culture which supports this kind of decision making will give you a real competitive advantage.

The other area is the strength of your culture. One of the major growth inhibitors is not getting enough of the right kind of people together with the time taken to integrate them  into your business to become fully productive. Having a strong culture creates what I have termed a cultural wall it works like this.

A company'as cultural wall uses a strong culture to ensure that only those potential employees who align with your culture will stay with the company. Those who are not fully committed or are trying to change it will bounce off the wall. That is either deliberately not join or leave soon after joining. Those who align with your culture will cross the wall and feel protected. This affinity leads to significantly lower attrition and a quicker absorption of new staff bringing them up to full productivity quicker, not to mention the increased likelihood of staff putting in more effort and extra hours into something to which they feel fully committed. 

By contrast those organisations with a weak or poorly developed culture suffer from inherently higher attrition as left unchecked people develop pockets of competing cultures, which results in a generally high level of attrition, and an increased chance that new employees will take longer to get up to speed. 

It should be obvious from the above how important Culture is to a business, the quicker companies get to grips with this the better their chance of longer term high growth.

Exigent Consulting provides specialist services for High Growth Business , Business Turnaround, and Mentoring to the Small and Medium Business. We help business owners improve the profit performance of their business. 

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