Saturday Scale Series

Do you really understand how to scale a business?

Scale Is Not Growth!!!

One of the most common and costly mistakes businesses make is believing that the terms growth and scale are interchangeable.

Many businesses don't fail because they can't get traction.

They fail after they achieve it.

Early success feels like business validation.

“We’ll fix it later” is not a strategy.

One of the most common questions I hear from business owners is:

"Do I scale my business before I need to?"

What are the early warning signs of a business that has outgrown itself?

Every healthy business should be improving. Processes get better. Waste gets reduced. People learn. That is not optional -- it should be normal.

But improvement is not the same thing as scale.

When does hiring stop solving the problem?

Hiring more people is the most common response to strain in a growing business.

I know the signs ... they are:

- The work is piling up.
- Project and delivery deadlines are slipping.
- You're feeling pulled in many different directions.

Is strategic planning important to business scale?

The first real step in scaling a business isn't hiring. It isn't process improvement. It isn't technology.

It's strategy.

Strategy allows silos to move in the same direction, supporting business scale.

Silos are created by structure. We honestly need them to operate and grow in business.

Organizational myopia is created in silos by missing strategy, among other reasons.

Does culture determine business scale?

I've said this many times, culture isn't what you say you value. It's not the words on the walls.

Culture is what your strategy designs and reinforces. It's what is allowed and not allowed in your business.

How do you pressure test your strategy and operations to see if it can scale?

One of the most dangerous assumptions in growing businesses is this:

"The strategy will sort itself out as we grow."

It won't!

Why can't businesses definitively explain how they deliver value?

Ask most business leaders a simple question:

"How does your business actually deliver value to customers?"

The answers are often vague.

Does your business have a backbone?

The operating model of a business is your business's backbone.

It's also the Backbone of Scale.