Scaling Up - Taking Your Business to the Next Level

During May of this year I attended the Global Summit of Women, an international conference held in Santiago, Chile.  The summit is attended by dozens of governmental ministers and international corporate executives as well as hundreds of professional and entrepreneurial women.  It is a remarkable exchange of ideas and best practices from governmental agencies, corporations, NGOs and small businesses that have all discovered the power of working in unison to achieve goals.  As my friends in AMMJE (the Mexican association of women entrepreneurs) like to say, [as women] "alone we are invisible, together we are invincible". 

I spoke on a multi-national panel regarding corporate social responsibility, had lunch at the American ambassador's home, and met up with numerous online friends, but I especially enjoyed the opportunity to speak alongside women from Mexico and China as we shared the lessons we have learned as entrepreneurs.  We were asked to address the specific topic of business growth, giving our recommendations for taking businesses to the next level.  During these challenging economic times, I'd like to share six tips that have worked for me.

1. As soon as you are able, get a line of credit and continuously work on a transparent and communicative relationship with your lender.  Some of you were prescient enough to obtain lines of credit when you didn't need them, and now are glad that they are in place.
2. Define your growth strategies and then align your structure (resources, roles, responsibilities, systems) to support them.  When you hire talent, be sure they fit in the structure.  When you have opportunities, take only those that fit within the strategies.  I believe that the single greatest reason businesses fail to grow (or simply fail) is a lack of execution on their key strategies.
   
   Before you begin work on growth strategies, do some homework.  First, identify your competitive advantages - the things that differentiate you from your competitors.  For instance, Douglass Screen Printers is the only screen printer in the Top 50 printers to the U.S. Government Printing Office.  Author and speaker Jaynie Smith wrote a terrific book entitled Creating Competitive Advantage which thoroughly explores this topic.  Second, identify the desired customers ("target markets") for your products/services and make sure you know what their buying behaviors are and what they expect of the buying experience.
3. Keep developing and pushing yourself.  You can't learn enough. One of John Maxwell's 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership is the premise that the people you hire are a reflection of you, and that you can never allow your personal growth to stop.
   
   

   Remember, learning doesn't necessarily happen in the classroom; it comes from participation, engagement, and experience with boards, organizations, professional groups, and ad hoc opportunities such as conferences and events.

   
   You might also choose someone that you really admire and ask them to be a mentor to you, or even hire an executive coach.  One of the strongest influences on my own development was the many years I spent in TEC (The Executive Committee, now known as Vistage).  TEC's unique business forum model offers many-to-one and one-to-one coaching and peer support.

4. Hire REALLY smart and hire on behavior.  Sure, knowledge and experience and education are important, but none of those will matter if the prospect doesn't have the behavorial aptitude to perform successfully.  One of my favorite assessment tools is DISC but there are many others.  The basic premise is to match people and skills for success.  Another dimension of behavior is values.  If you don't know the personal values that motivate people to change, then you can't possibly manage their progress towards the results you want.  For instance, hiring a sales person who is not economically motivated will have disastrous results, and hiring an accountant who does not highly value honesty and integrity will be similarly ugly.
5. Define your key results areas (typically Markets, Products, Operational Systems, Management Systems, Financial Performance and Culture) and set metric targets for each.  As the old adage goes, you cannot manage what you do not measure. If you are unfamiliar with key result areas, I recommend Management Systems based at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. On the strategy execution side, I love Bruno Aziza's Drive Business Performance:  Enabling a Culture of Intelligent Execution.
6. Recognize that YOU are the biggest single component in your corporate brand, and relentlessly promote both.  Having heard Robin Fisher Roffer speak on personal branding, I highly recommend her book Make a Name for Yourself. 

You really do have a lot of control of your professional success.  Finding your way doesn't have to be frustrating or seemingly impossible, but it does require action. Planning and deciding and intending amount to little without execution.