There’s a conundrum in business. As businesses grow, they can become an amalgam of different things, finding it difficult to fulfil their niche.
It starts when a client asks you to pick something up outside of your original remit. After all, if other businesses are doing similar things, then why shouldn’t yours to increase growth and profits?
Not wanting to disappoint them and chasing that extra revenue, you start taking on projects outside of your traditional scope that begin to drain your resources – time and investment in training, technology, and manpower.
Before you know it, you’ve spent a significant amount of time and money on an additional revenue stream which may or may not come off.
You’ve chased the revenue instead of your purpose. You’ve forgotten about your fundamentals and turned into Frankenstein’s Monster, with processes, people, and systems that somehow morph into one.
But there is a way past it. Trust me, I’ve been there where you’re trying to do much with your business and stray from your original purpose.
And the solution is easier than you think. Look at where you want to be, what type of business you want to be, what type of culture you want to implement and what type of people you want to hire. Focus on that, and the numbers will come naturally.
Focus on your people
Anything to do with your purpose has to start with your people.
The C-suite can make critical decisions and offer direction, but if your purpose isn’t bought into by employees, it means nothing. Employees need that clarity and purpose which empowers them to succeed.
Driving a sense of collective agency will improve your chances of success. Yes, the C-suite must lead but equally, the inclusion of key people business-wide is essential.
For example, if your business has employees who are knowledgeable about AI, it would be naïve for the C-Suite to not listen to them.
We use timesheets and time data to demonstrate our purpose and achieve buy-in from our employees. This allows examine where our strengths lie, where we are struggling, and which areas may not be profitable for us and lie outside of our remit.
From there, we demonstrate to our employees how our purpose ties into their development. Because at the end of the day, you grow your profit so you can grow your people.
By discovering your purpose, streamlining your business, and finding your focus areas, you can make more money, attract more clients, and invest more in your staff’s development.
This is business critical: employees need to see a reward for buying into your business’s vision.
Widen your lane
As your organisation becomes medium sized, you’ll have inevitably made some decisions that have paid off – and some that haven’t. But this doesn’t mean you should stop taking risks now.
It means you should double down on the areas you have expertise in and simultaneously not be afraid to drop what isn’t working. Too often, businesses cling on to a failing part of their offering because they put pride before a fall.
They believe they can’t drop a product or service because clients will become concerned about what they aren’t doing. But this isn’t the case – people only care about what you can offer them, not what you can’t.
This isn’t to say stop taking risks and lose your entrepreneurial mindset though. You want to be focussed on your purpose without being blinded by it; still look for special projects and opportunities.
It’s important to not be consumed by your own ‘back to basics’ approach. You need to retain that open mindset but only in things that are integrated in your offering; not adjacent.
After all, you’re not trying to jump from lane to lane, but instead trying to make your lane wider.
Retaining this flexible mindset is so important. The path to growth isn’t linear and relies upon consistent focus and decision-making. Reduce any external noise, have your own well-thought-out plans, and have faith in your principles while keeping yourself in check with data and surrounding yourself with great people.
Do all this and you can regain that focus that allows you to properly align and drive the growth which you are aspiring for.
