For leaders growing and scaling a business
Growing and scaling a business?
Whether you’re building your organisation now or starting your next one, design how it works before the problems become embedded. If you’ve done this before, you’ve already seen what doesn’t work. It won’t be perfect, but it will be far easier to run and to scale than the organisations most of us have known.
What usually goes wrong
Growth makes everything bigger, including the problems.
Growth and acquisition multiply weaknesses as well as strengths when the underlying operating system is unclear.
In a growing business, decisions get made quickly, by capable people, under pressure. Each one is reasonable at the time. But when the right expertise enters those decisions at different times, the choices compound into an organisation that becomes harder and more expensive to run, manage and change.
Get it right while it’s still easy to change.
The opportunity
The best time to design how your organisation works is before habits, systems and structures set. Decide deliberately how your people, processes, technology and partners will work together, while those choices can still be influenced. Make them well and the organisation works right first time, rather than needing to be fixed later.
The path to scalable growth
Most growing businesses need to get the first two steps right.
Get Direction and Organisation right while they’re still easy to change, and Execution, Operational excellence and Scalable performance become far easier.
Direction
→ Focused
Set the ambition, and understand what it will take to get there.
Organisation
→ Aligned and joined up
Design how the work, roles and decisions fit together.
Execution
→ Higher performance
Line up people, work and resources to deliver what matters most.
Operational excellence
→ Ready to scale
Create steady flow, enough capacity and consistent results.
Scalable performance
→ Growth that lasts
Grow with control and agility: more customers and more value, without more complexity.
Already further along and finding it hard to get things done? See how we help established organisations →
How it works
From a conversation to lasting change.
Whatever brought you here, the path is usually much the same, and it starts with a conversation.
01
Talk it through
A free half-hour conversation about where the business is heading and what’s getting in the way.
02
Fix what can’t wait
Deal quickly with the problems that need attention now, to ease the pressure of growth.
03
Find what’s behind it
The free Business Execution Canvas Diagnostic shows which underlying causes sit behind the symptoms, in about 15 minutes per person.
04
Build it right first time
For a growing business this usually starts with a leadership workshop to draw your organisation’s BEC: what you promise, why customers want it, and how every team will deliver it. Alex and his team then work alongside yours to build it, measure again and keep revisiting it as you grow.
Steps 3 and 4 follow the Business Execution Canvas®. What is the Business Execution Canvas? ↗
What you get
A business that can explain itself.
Your Business User Manual sets out, in a few pages, what the organisation does, why it does it and how it works.
As you grow, new people can understand how the business is meant to run, and the manual grows with the organisation without becoming an administrative burden.
Ask to see an example in your free 30-minute call.
Who you’ll be working with
Someone who has built businesses, not just advised them.
Alex has done what he now helps others do.
- He founded Technodisc in 1984 and built it from a concept to a $14m business with 120 staff, before selling it to Dakota plc.
- As CEO of IDOC, he grew European revenue from $500k to $10m, acquired three competitors to reach $60m, and sold the group to Bowne, forming Bowne Global Solutions.
- At Dell, he grew the EMEA Asset Recovery business from $5m to $80m in 15 months, while cutting operating costs by 20% and increasing capacity by 250% at the same cost.
Since 2003 he has helped more than seventy organisations improve how they operate.
Further reading
Who Designed Your Organisation?
Who Designed Your Organisation? shows how founders and established organisations can reduce operational debt, improve execution and build the strength to grow.
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