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Three Reasons Why Small Businesses Stay Small When the Opposite is Desired

February 2, 2017

Blog Topic

Many clients have come to me frustrated because they wanted to grow their business and couldn’t.

When I explore their situations, these clients reveal these most common reasons:

  1. Ignorance
  • Not knowing how to structure and develop scalable systems.
  • Not being able to distinguish between what is a cost and what is an investment.
  • Not knowing how to select the right people for a growth oriented business.
  • Not having effective people skills.
  1. Habits
  • Remaining operationally focussed, instead of becoming strategic.
  • Beliefs about self, staff, business competition and customers’ needs.
  1. Fear
  • Fear of failure (and/or success).
  • Fear of loss of control.
  • Fear of imagined reactions of others.

As a leadership coach who has previously built businesses, learned from both success and failure, been a CEO and managing director of both private and public companies, and before that trained and led military and law-enforcement operations, I have helped clients grow from start up to established scaled business, and even planned exit.

The above reasons have been experienced, either in part or in whole, by almost everyone at some stage, including me.

The remedies we applied to overcome the problems:

  1. Continuous learning
  • We learned how to scale, there are many useful models.
  • Became clear about cost and investment, we need both to grow.
  • Received help regarding staff selection.
  • Improved our people skills.
  • Engaged a leadership coach to help us personally grow and create an advisory board to help in all areas needed.

 

  1. Disruption, Awareness and Better Practice
  • Became aware of our habits, particularly staying operational; practiced thinking and being strategic – our leadership coach is very valuable here.
  • Corrected our beliefs around self, staff, competition and customers – our leadership coach is crucial here.
  1. Courage
  • Our leadership coach helped us to draw on our source of courage, our values and vision.
  • Our leadership coach helped us see that we never had control in the first place, just the ability to influence and persuade and model the way.
  • Our leadership coach helped us to alter the way we see and respond to others.

What other points are useful to make?

Photo Credit: Mike Wilson

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