I had the pleasure recently of sitting in a foundry, yes, a foundry. Who would’ve thought that there was any such thing still operating in NZ, however there is and it is very successful… except that is it has grown very fast and not kept pace with the rate of change.
Small business owners generally want to become big business owners some day and yet many sme’s are not geared up when small to cope with the pain associated with growth. This foundry grew from 8 staff including the very active owner to 60 staff, via a few acquisitions, over the space of 18 months or so.
The result however was an owner who no longer could work in the business but somehow had to extract himself from the day to day operations to be able to take a helicopter view. Growth can both kill or grow a small business unless you think big early in your planning phase, I.e plan to arrive at your destination before you depart on the journey, plan to be ‘out’ of the business before it gets so big you cannot possibly be on top of everything. This is where an active consultative GM can help you to get to this nirvana before you find the pain of too quick a growth pattern can see youth business fail.
A simple first step is to document everything you do and all the processes in your business so anyone can do them if you were no longer there.
The challenge, of course, is making the time to do this, fear not there is help.