A business is a living being that evolved up to now as a result of the work of the business leader, of team members, of stakeholders and due to specific market circumstances, clients, competition etc.
The simplest way to understand how to go about growing your business is to look at it in an objective way, as a psychologist would look at a client, by understanding and assessing:
- Where the client is now and how it got there
- Current challenges of the client
- The growth goals of the client (including timeline and milestone)
- The action plan
- Evaluating results and updating the action plan as needed
Step 1. Business – as is now and how it got here
This step should include an analysis of the commercial, financial, legal, operational and human resources and management aspects. The analysis may be summarized as a company presentation, may include historical financial analysis, Porter’s Five Forces Model, Broad Factor Analysis (PEST Analysis) and/or SWOT Analysis and diagnostics analysis on other aspects.
A clear view on the business should be formed at the end of this step.
Step 2. Current challenges of the business
Current challenges of the business may be derived from both external and internal factors and are important as they represent risks that may be mitigated to a certain extent (often at a cost), which influence the health of the business and may also have an impact on future performance.
This can be summarized as a table containing risks by categories and can also include a quantification of the risk, as well as the probability of these risks appearing.
Step 3. Growth goals of the business
Based on the thorough understanding gathered in the previous steps, an outlook of the goals of the business can be drawn. These can be checked for reasonability and adjusted based on the analysis of market dynamics from the first step, as well as by considering the impact of the current challenges of the business.
This step can be summarized as a business plan and include a financial model, as well as a timeline of implementing actions and milestones.
Step 4. Business strategy – action plan and implementation
More than a theoretical set of actions, this plan should include actions, people responsible, timeline of execution, resources and KPIs for these actions and should be enforced by leadership and implemented by the company.
Step 5. Evaluate, control and review
Growing your company should not be an one-off exercise, business improvement should be at the heart of the business. The responsibility of growing the business should trickle down to the level of each employee, the business plan should be analysed and updated at regular time intervals – yearly or whenever an important event with impact on the business plan occurs.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you are looking to grow your business.