Usually, the systems that we have in our business that work for our existing scale fail with any significant level of revenue growth. When we start to feel the stress of growth, we look to make our existing systems more efficient. That works for a period of time, until it doesn’t – usually with a miserable and very painful systemic failure.
My buddy Craig Swanson, who makes a living helping influencers grow their businesses, calls this attempt at scale, swelling. Which is both hilarious and awful to visualize and experience, as I can attest to. There have been times when my business has become very efficient, but no longer as effective in its marketplace. We became too focused on our internal problems and began to lose track of our customers’ problems. Never a good thing!
Think Big
During my ongoing time in the Strategic Coach program, the leaders frequently talk about 10x’ing your business… ie, What would it look like for your business to operate at ten times the size it is now? Thinking about a business at this scale forces us to accept that our existing processes just can’t hold up forever. You can’t personally take all the sales calls, your product engineers will no longer have time to demo, you may need geo-specific subsidiaries, etc. Many entrepreneurs, me included, become a little too dependent on what is currently working. We forget that if we are going to grow, we need to reinvent ourselves from within. This is the same force, creative destruction, that Karl Marx used negatively to describe our capitalist system. It was later embraced by Joseph Schumpeter as a healthy rallying cry to what makes capitalist culture so unique.
I’m not saying drop everything and start from scratch. That’s a great way to go into receivership. I’m just pointing out that when our growth target is inwardly focused, we build stale companies that are out of touch with the market. If the growth target is focused on supporting our marketplace at scale, almost by default, our companies will look different when we get there.
It may not always be necessary, but I would encourage you (and me) to continually question what is working. What does our marketplace need from us at scale? And, more importantly, is our current approach the best way to meet those needs at scale? I suspect the answers to these questions will push us toward reinvention and growth.
PS – I blatantly ripped off this title from Marshall Goldsmith, who’s book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There has been instrumental in helping me get over some of my personal leadership bad habits.
Thanks to Alfred Schrock for his beautiful shot of the butterfly.