Overcoming business growing pains

If you are experiencing a “business boom” accompanied by a cash shortage, this is a symptom of business growing pains. The reasoning goes back to your stage in the business lifecycle. As an infant or emerging adolescent business, you are likely still collecting payments on old jobs you completed when your business was smaller. Now, as you grow your business, you’re faced with newer and larger expenses reflecting a growing workload. The payments from your older, smaller jobs cannot sustain unpaced growth, and your cash flow will reflect this.

Declining staff morale is one of the most destructive problems with office growing pains. Staff responsibilities increase as sales increase. If your team does not have the support it needs to operate effectively, morale will plummet. As an emerging business, it’s also likely that your staff has not yet received a pay increase to compensate for increasing responsibilities. And when it comes to morale, it’s your customers who bear the brunt, since it’s difficult to prioritize customer service when your own on-the-job needs are not being met. 

Mindful scaling is the concept behind sustainable business growth. In mindful scaling, there is an initial period of linear growth in which a company develops the internal processes and skills it needs to (later) expand sales. Once a business is able to successfully incubate its operations, it can then shift into a period of growth-oriented development. When you are trying to prevent the problems with rapid growth of a business, it’s essential that you remember the principles of sustainable growth. Hone your company culture and brand identity before accelerating sales. By scaling sustainably, you buy yourself the time you need to perfect your product or service, create thoughtful and effective operations, establish your team and ultimately build a brand that will stand the test of time.

To prevent the complications associated with business growing pains, you must plan for cash flow problems before they become fatal for your company. Saving funds in a growth reserve fund is one way to have cash on hand for emergencies. In addition, you must always overestimate expenses and underestimate revenue to have a conservative and realistic sense of your cash flow needs. That said, if you haven’t preempted these particular risks of expanding a business, there’s still hope. If you’ve been growing your business too quickly, it’s likely your money is tied up in accounts receivable. Consider adjusting your invoicing practices to obtain timely payments, and pursue collections if you need to (ideally through an independent third-party collections agency so as not to drain your staff).

Recognize that rapid growth has the potential to signal rapid (short-term) profit, and that profit does not directly benefit your staff. Instead, when you succumb to company growing pains, your staff does the work necessary to achieve growth, but does not receive the same benefits your investors, partners and executive team enjoy. You must take action to prevent resentment from festering, since this is a recipe for rapid turnover. Rather than blame your staff for being unable to keep up with a rapidly-increasing workload, prioritize staff morale by keeping the lines of communication open. This is your opportunity to develop company policies that foster staff collaboration and project ownership. You must also keep in mind that employees are necessarily prompted to action by compensation, and you’ll lose valuable staff if you’re not compensating them adequately. 

To develop your business successfully and avert office growing pains, you must hone a leadership mindset. If you fall into the role of being a business operator instead of a business owner, you’ll find yourself unsure of what to do with the challenges of running a business. The key here is developing a growth mindset. When you understand that you bring unique strengths and skills to your business, you’re empowered to find out-of-the-box solutions. Building your leadership skills starts with appreciating yourself, which builds confidence. From there, you have the self-assurance necessary to acknowledge your weaknesses and improve on them.

With all the moving parts of running a business, it’s easy to become distracted from what inspired you to start a business in the first place. The key to preventing office growing pains is sticking to that original vision so that it informs every step you take. Your vision is the rudder that guides your thought processes, trimming unnecessary actions that do not contribute to your growth.

As you master the art of growing your business, you must be willing to change course as necessary. One of the pitfalls of running a business is being so committed to a course of action that you refuse to acknowledge that it’s causing harm. Striking the right balance between being committed to your vision and being willing to make necessary changes is key to overcoming office growing pains. Creating a flexible business map is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal, since it lets you anticipate and plan for hurdles before they happen.

As you master the art of growing your business, you must be willing to change course as necessary. One of the pitfalls of running a business is being so committed to a course of action that you refuse to acknowledge that it’s causing harm. Striking the right balance between being committed to your vision and being willing to make necessary changes is key to overcoming office growing pains. Creating a flexible business map is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal, since it lets you anticipate and plan for hurdles before they happen.

Growing a business is no time for fluff. To eliminate company growing pains, you must trim costs and develop an efficient environment. Remember that just because a practice or policy is working right now doesn’t mean it’s necessarily your best strategy for long-term growth. Until you’re “out of the weeds” concerning business growing pains, measure every facet of your business from a profit-and-loss perspective.