How one of our clients grew his team and business, and what you can learn
What are your plans for your business over the next 1, 2 and 5 years?
What will your team look like, and how many team members will you have?
If you are looking to grow and scale your business and your team, this article is a must-read.
In this article, we look at how one of our clients grew his team and business with our support, and what you can learn.
An ex-corporate IT wizard following his own dream:
When our client, an ex-corporate IT wizard who was following his dream, met our founder, he was running his start up IT business from his kitchen table, after leaving his corporate career to follow his passion.
He wanted to ultimately transition away from being the person who carried out the work, and aimed to grow his team.
While we do work with businesses in this initial phase, many of our clients are growing and scaling companies that have moved past this stage and have the foundations of their team in place.
When businesses and teams grow, new challenges appear:
Three years into working with this client, during which our founder supported him in overcoming a number of challenges in this early phase, he was starting to bring team members into the business and to hire employees.
When all businesses and teams grow, new challenges appear, and with this client it was no different.
Three challenges that are common as businesses and teams start to grow:
Based on more than thirty years of experience in executive development and in supporting teams and businesses to grow, we have identified that there are 17 factors that will shift a business forward.
For businesses and teams starting to grow and scale though, the following are the three areas that commonly need focus:
1. Staffing and recruitment:
Businesses that need to focus on this area often notice that they struggle to keep their team members, and therefore see an increase in their staff churn rate. They may also be noticing inter-personal issues between team members, and that they are not recruiting the right people for the roles they are advertising for.
2. Effective communication:
Business leaders may need to focus on communication if they notice a drop in either productivity, profitability or sales, or a mix of all three.
3. Developing a strong vision:
In our experience, the challenges associated with the first two areas above, including the drop in productivity and the staff churn rate, will also highlight the need for the business- and the leadership within it- to develop a strong vision for the growing team to rally around.
New challenges after our client passed phase one:
As we mentioned earlier, three years into working with this client, he was starting to bring team members into the business and to hire employees.
As highlighted above, staffing was a new, but important challenge for our client. When he hired people, he found that they could not ‘cut the mustard’.
How we supported him through this challenge, and what you can learn:
As we have highlighted throughout previous articles and during our recent workshops, when it comes to recruitment, you need to identify the characteristics you are looking for in a potential hire.
Once you know what kind of people, and the kind of characteristics, you are looking for, the next step is then identifying those people as early as possible.
Thinking about our IT wizard client, we supported him by developing a framework for his recruitment process to help him do just that.
That framework helped him with the first hires he made, but also supported him as he employed his 10th, 20th and now almost three dozen employees.
When it comes to your recruitment process, how do you identify the right people, as early as you can?
An equally important question though, especially if you are experiencing a squeeze on recruitment, is ‘how do you identify the hidden talents and characteristics among your existing team members?’
Communication and vision weren’t challenges- and here is why:
Earlier we identified three areas that commonly need focus as businesses and teams start to grow and scale: staffing, communication, and vision.
While staffing was an issue for this client, he had no issues with communication and vision among his growing team.
The core reason for this is because he had already worked with our founder for three years, and had discussed the importance of understanding each of his team members, specifically understanding- on an individual level- which of their three brains were dominant.
How do you step back and have a helicopter view?
The reality is, for many business owners- whatever stage they are at- they are caught up in the hamster wheel within the business.
Ultimately, this means that they struggle to identify the core issues within the business or their teams.
Taking a step back, understanding the team you already have, identifying the gaps and uncovering hidden talents, will help you move to the next level, and grow and scale your business.
What are the areas that you, as a business leader, need to focus on to shift your business to the next stage? And what support do you need to make the shift?
Our founder Neil, and our team, have over thirty years of experience in executive development, and have worked with more than 6,760 business owners to unlock the potential within their teams and take them to the next level.
To find out more about how you can build world-class teams made up of motivated, engaged people, click here to sign up for our next executive seminar, where we will uncover how growing and scaling companies can manage the big squeeze of 2022.
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