Growing your business is usually the main focus of most business articles – to be honest, it’s often the focus of our articles and blogs too – but it’s worth taking a serious look at what growth actually means for you and your business, before deciding whether this is the route that you want to go down.
So, what does growth actually mean?
More, More, More
Growth means more – more work, more staff, more cash and more profit. And more stress! Growth means pushing your business to take on more, stretching its limiting factors and then replenishing these factors to enable it to grow.
Growing is like a speeding train travelling down a track that isn’t built yet. You need to get the track in place before the train comes off the track.
Going outside of your comfort zone
Growth is about pushing you and your team outside of their comfort zones to achieve more. You need to be adaptable and willing to accept and embrace change in order to propel your business forward. If you don’t feel that this is for you, or you don’t feel you have the right team in place, then growth might not be for you just yet.
The Five Stages of Growth
Take a look at this model by researchers Neil C. Churchill and Virginia L. Lewis in 1983:
These are the five stages of growth and what you will notice in each of them is that there is a crisis. A crisis that needs to be overcome to enable the business to grow. If you like solving problems and pushing the boundaries, then growth is for you.
What if where you are right now is ok?
As human beings we often don’t appreciate the now – we look forward to things, to holidays, to events and to the future. But we often forget that now is the future! Now is where it’s at – living, at least some part, in the moment is important.
If only we knew then, pre-pandemic, what we know now, then maybe we would have appreciated the smaller things in life.
So before embarking on the growth journey, you need to take a long hard look at your present business and decide if growing the business is what you want to do and whether it may be viable.
If growth is for you then we can help.
Firstly, we only work with growing businesses, those with ambition who want to grow. Having a good accountant on your side is vital for business growth.
We help by supporting you along the journey, by assisting you to put in place the processes you need to facilitate the growth.
We have written a factsheet series detailing the 12 Barriers to Growth containing 12 factsheets explaining the barriers that prevent growth and how to overcome them.
If you decide that the growth of your business is your ambition, then give us a call.
