Introduction
For most business owners, planning how to grow their business can be a daunting experience. Not only do they have to maintain and keep up with the ongoing business demands and requirements, they also need to find solutions on how to fund their growth, balance resource requirements, and prioritize a myriad of additional tasks and responsibilities.
Context Matters
However, in planning your growth, context matters. Although each business is different, the challenge and opportunity of business growth can generally be categorized into 3 main groups:
- Strugglers: You need more sales. Need more from your business to make it worthwhile. Your business isn’t “working well”.
- Navigators: You want to grow your business because you sense an opportunity. Business is growing but you are unsure how to take it to the next level.
- Builders: Need for business expansion driven by organic sales growth. You have a successful, profitable business and have an opportunity to take it to the next level.
Each of these will have its own unique growth planning approach and challenges.
Strugglers
Having a business that is struggling to grow, or that isn’t working too well can be very stressful and frustrating. Business owners who find themselves in this situation wrongly believe that their main challenge is lack of sales or marketing skills, or that their challenge can be solved by improving how they manage their business. However, finding yourself in such a business situation generally goes back to foundational business design, problem-solution fit, and financial feasibility issues. In this situation, getting your business to grow and “work” will require you to go back to the basics - before even thinking about a growth strategy and plan.
Navigators
Sensing an opportunity for your business to grow and expand can be exciting. However, it can also be a daunting prospect with many questions, uncertainties, challenges, and risks. Many business owners approach these challenges and opportunities from a conventional growth plan perspective. However, our advice is to start from a business and growth design perspective supported by a financial decision-making model - before writing your growth plan. Not only will this approach increase your chances of getting funded, it will also guide you in the execution and monitoring of actual growth implementation.
Builders
Business builders need support in helping them access funding and advice in guiding them how to build a learning, growing and sustainable organization. They need a business plan to support funding, but have established systems and processes in place for the continued management of business growth. Our advice and approach guide these business owners in combining design and systems thinking in developing a learning and agile, future-ready business supported by a financial decision-making model and business intelligence monitoring tool.
