If you cast your mind back to your first employee’s first day at work you will probably realise that you drew a line in the sand that day. No more playing small. No more reducing your business capacity to your own personal limitations. No more missed opportunities. And no more delaying the building of your dream. That was the day you started to accelerate the building of your empire. It has not always been a smooth ride, but with more hands to the plough has come increased productivity, greater progress, and more potential.

The type of business growth that comes with a multiplying team is truly explosive. Your business will look very different than it did back in the start up days. There will be more things happening, more people doing them, and more problems arising. The challenges of managing a full team after those first few years are vastly removed from the days where you stepped out to navigate your way through your first hire. Making progress through the various stages of building and expanding a team often results in surges of freedom and productivity for the entrepreneur. This can lead to more hires, more productivity, more progress and more potential. And then, it starts to snowball. Oftentimes out of control. Yes the company can keep growing on paper, but the chaotic nature of this type of growth is absolutely not sustainable.

Your business cannot continue to expand if you are facing these operational deficits.

LACK OF ORGANISATION

A growing business must be organised. Methods of filing, storage and labeling should not inadvertently hide things from your team. Rather, all resources should be arranged in systems that make it easy for everyone to find what they need. This goes for receipts, contacts, emails, logins, records, branding collateral, stock, stationery, tea room supplies, order forms, electronic files, and all the documentation which support staff employment, compliance, company policy, workplace guidelines, licencing and registration. If you or your team consistently have trouble finding what you need to perform daily work you are wasting time (which is money). When things are a mess you cannot have the efficiency you need to grow, let alone the clarity of vision and head space you need to take new ground to make an impact in your industry.

What “things” do you need to clean up in your business?

LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY

A growing business must also ensure that each member of the team is accountable for their contribution and performance. Every person’s contribution is valuable. You can measure this value in the number of hours they work (which means you don’t have to), the amount of money you invest into their employment, the volume of expert knowledge they bring to your workplace, or the human contribution they make to enhance the social experience for the rest of your team. Which ever way you look at it, your people matter, so it stands that they should be held accountable to meet your expectations. Ensure their job is clearly defined in their Position Description, that your company culture is made explicit in words that are spoken, written and demonstrated, and that their are measures in place to follow up when standards are not met.

How can you keep track of your team better?

LACK OF TRANSPARENCY

Operational transparency is vital for a company intent on expanding into new areas of success. Certainly, there are some workplace situations which require confidentiality, privacy and discretion. But when it comes to the daily workings of your core business operations, there should be nothing but an absolute investment in shared knowledge. A bitter toxicity pervades the workplace which accommodates secret squirrels who horde company knowledge for their own perceived power or gain. A dangerously risky vulnerability comes to the company who has key passwords, contacts, documents and logins hidden by individuals working their own selfish agenda, or staff who simply never bother to keep track of these things. It is up to the business owner to create and enforce workplace routines which see all team members contributing to the health of the business with practices of full disclosure.

What needs to be brought into the light in your company?

LACK OF CONSISTENCY

Where there is no consistent performance, there can be no consistent growth. Health experts say there is more benefit in four half hour walks throughout the week than there is in one two hour walk on the weekend. A burst of great workplace performance will likely reap a burst of rewards, but if these benefits can’t be sustained by the business they will be consumed by a ruthless marketplace. If your customers have a wonderful first experience with you they will likely return with their friends. If they are left wanting, you will not only lose the loyalty of your original customer, but also their friends’, along with others they will never tell about you because they have been let down. It is not ok for any of your staff to get it right “most” of the time. They need to have processes in place that will support their continued excellence. This is how you stand out as a leader dominating the marketplace.

How can your company set your team up for ongoing workplace wins?

LACK OF COLLEGIALITY

Finally, for you to continue to build a business bigger than yourself, you need a genuinely supportive, caring, invested culture in your workplace. Getting a job is difficult in these tight economic times, and often workplace politics, industry competition and personality clashes can result in staff tensions. Your team are real humans with desires, opinions, vulnerabilities and insecurities. They possess the innate ability to lash out in aggression or defensiveness in response to a perceived threat, which will undermine the success of those around them, and undercut the potential of the company as a whole. If you establish strong foundations of Organisation, Accountability, Transparency and Consistency in your business, you can build on these to nurture a genuinely collegial spirit where positivity and teamwork is the norm.   

What can you do to enhance the unity of your team?

No entrepreneurial journey is ever smooth, and the practical demands of running a rapidly expanding operation are not always easy to meet, but if you make it a priority to develop exemplary operational standards you will have the ability to rise above the demands of any growth challenge.

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If this article has struck a chord with you, please go right ahead and message me. I would love to hear more about what you do, and how I might be able to help you transform your business into the Freedom Machine you have wanted all along. Let’s establish a proven system in your business to create team certainty and sustainable expansion which open pathways to the lifestyle choices you’ve worked so hard for. No matter where you are, I am only a message away. And to make stalking me really easy, here is my website :D http://www.kerryannenelson.com/