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Are You Stifling The Growth Of Your Business?

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There comes a time when every successful business outgrows its owner. Of course, you don’t want to be the bottleneck that’s holding your company back from achieving more, and as such, it may be an uncomfortable truth. Being consciously aware that you may need to move on and doing so are the same thing.

There are steps you can take to first work out if it is you or something else. Then what you can do about it without damaging your reputation or that of your business.

Is It You?

Being the boss is often a lonely role. You can not share your worries with your staff.

Self-doubt can creep in at any time, too, and it can affect how you communicate with your workers.

Use your business coach or mentor to work out if the stagnation in your business growth is you. It may be that you need more training, education, or time to invest in specialist skills to take the business forward. Or the bottleneck may be just something you are doing that can be stopped.

You’re Taking Too Much Control

When you’re the owner of a business, you want to be the one in control. It’s you that gets to make all the crucial decisions, and you get the final say on everything. If you’re taking too much power, you’re not allowing your business to flourish.

What’s to say that one of your employees won’t come up with a game-changing idea? Are you really that confident in your talents that you don’t need them? What is that going to do for their happiness and productivity levels?

You’re Fighting Against Restrictions

Sometimes, an inability to grow is a result of placing your business under too many restrictions. Let’s say you need to upgrade to bigger and better premises, but you’re stuck in a long-term contract. That’s no good!  Let’s say you’ve entered into a partnership that isn’t working out. Now, the growth you want to put in place is being blocked by your partners. Maybe, you should have thought this through a little more.

You’ve Lost Confidence In Your Team

A business owner that doesn’t have confidence in their team is going to have a rough ride.

At the end of the day, these are your employees, and you hired them. You did that for a reason, and if they’re not performing, there might be more to the situation than meets the eye. Is there something you can do? Invest in your employees, and turn those individuals back into your team.

Your Money Is Being Delegated Poorly

Never underestimate the financial accounting side of your business.  Leaking cash that goes undetected is sure to hold your business back.

  • Have you got an accountant?
  • Are you throwing money away on needless equipment and accessories?
  • Where’s all your money going, anyway?

You need to make sure you’re fully aware of the financial performance of your business at all times.

Even when you’re too busy, and you’ve delegated this task to someone else, that doesn’t mean you can afford to ignore it. If you’re not aware of your business finances, you could find yourself in a devastating financial position before long i.e. bankruptcy.

You’ve Lost Interest In What You’re Doing

You can fake it for as long as you like – if you’ve lost interest, you’re stifling growth. It isn’t something to be ashamed of, but you need to try and get to the bottom of why you’re unhappy.

What is it about this career path that doesn’t excite you anymore? The bottom line is that you won’t be putting in your best work if you feel this way. You can’t grow until you can change this mindset.

Organisational Change

So many questions that have no doubt got you thinking. By now, you’ll know if it is you, something else or a combination of both.

Business change management is the starting point to planning how your business will start to do things differently.

Working on your people (including yourself) so everyone is on the same page with the company’s heading is vital to successful organisational change. There are many methodologies to manage change management.

Like any project you need to:

  • Identify the goals
  • Who will be affected, i.e. lose their job or be reassigned a new role
  • Who will be involved with the change management project
  • What will success look like when the goals are achieved
  • What and who are required to make the change
  • How is it tracking – i.e. reaching milestones
  • What’s next

Transitioning the business to compete and grow starts with your staff. Technology will play a role in improving efficiencies and securing more sales, which may replace your team’s tasks. For example, using Live Chat or a ChatBot for customer support.

The best way to get through the upheaval of change management is to engage consultants to work with you and your team.

Change is inevitable for all and UK businesses know this better than most – and they’re rebounding from setbacks. So can you.

HubSpot