Get More Sleep and Avoid The Growth Trap
- Are you afraid you can’t avoid shrinking profits, sustain growth, and fight this economy successfully?
- Do you believe in hiring and growing “A” players yet are struggling to do so?
- Are you surprised to be fighting fires, perhaps growing broke and expending more time/ energy than you did when you were smaller?
Then you are in the Growth Trap. What makes Gaining Results unique is our ability to help executives who are stuck in the “Growth Trap.”
Wouldn’t it be great if you could implement a proven, sustainable, straightforward framework to run and grow the business faster, more profitably, expending less effort and less time? That’s exactly what we help our clients do!
What is the Growth Trap?
A CEO is in the Growth Trap when increases in organizational complexity demand more of their energy and time than they expected. You know you are in it when you would rather work “on” the business and find yourself working “in” the business. Instead of more freedom, you have less.
Root Causes of the Growth Trap
There are five root causes of the Growth Trap, each of which must be addressed to create sustainable, profitable growth.
1. Increasing Complexity, Decreasing Alignment
As your organization grows more complex, it becomes increasingly difficult to put knowledge and understanding into practice. It’s not about “what” to do (in most cases you know this) – it’s about “how” to get it done. An inability to instill discipline, habits, and alignment that are conducive to producing predictable results condemns many organizations to mediocrity.
2. Lousy People Decisions
Getting people decisions wrong creates massive headaches for you and stifles virtually every element that should be working in your organization to generate growth. Are people decisions including recruiting, hiring, promoting , deciding who to invest in made with best guesses, or data driven? Doing this correctly dramatically improves staff quality, engagement, accomplishment, and retention. Consider – Would you ENTHUSIASTICALLY rehire every person in your company tomorrow?
3. Increasing Competition, Decreasing Margins
Growth and success is a double-edged sword. The competition is putting you on their radar, which means that you might not be as comfortably differentiated as you once were. At the same time, some of your long-standing clients are beginning to pressure you to offer them some combination of better pricing and more features / services. Both of these inevitable trends lead to decreasing margins.
4. Cash Flow Pressure, Decreasing Profit
Growth consumes cash. Pressure on your margins decreases profit. The way for a $10 million business to become a $20 million business is for it to begin to act and execute like a $20 million business. Therefore, at any moment in time, your 4 key business decisions – Strategy, Cash Flow, People, Execution – should reflect the “next level” of performance rather than the way things have been done in the past. Many things in and around your business have changed; now you must change your decisions to break free and accelerate to the next level.
5. Leadership Stagnation
Because of root causes 1-4, you are mostly past and present focused – not future focused. You and your senior team must grow for your business to grow. Failing to acknowledge and act on this leads to insular thinking, and less growth innovation. All strengths and weaknesses in your organization can be traced directly back to the leadership team and your levels of trust, competence, discipline, alignment, and respect – each of which requires continual care.
What it feels like in the Growth Trap
Running your business feels like a frustrating vicious cycle – you take 3 steps forward and then 2-3 steps right back again. It may also feel like you’re spinning too many plates and it’s only a matter of time before they start to fall when you’re too exhausted to keep them all going. You know there is a way to make it all work, but you haven’t found it yet. Talk to us about Mastering the Rockefeller Habits™.
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