We recently built a new house – it was a painful 12-month process but we made it and we are very happy with the end product. Aside from everything being ‘new’, the best aspect is the size. We can actually move around in comfort. We were a family of 5 squashed into a small 3.5 bedroom house so now feel like we have wings!

I was reflecting on the house with my wife the other day and we remembered the time when we first moved into this 3.5 bedroom house feeling like we had wings because it was so much bigger than our first 2 bedroom house. And how the first 2 bedroom house felt like it gave us wings compared to the bedroom we were living in growing up with our parents. Each new house felt like freedom, which quickly gave way to a feeling of being trapped.

If you use this as a metaphor for business, can the business owners out there relate?

I was seeing a client recently who had just moved to a (significantly) bigger premises and it had already been filled. I often speak to business owners who have some sort of growth goal because the goal represents some form of freedom. The reality is growth, for all its exciting and fun aspects, does carry some pain……growing pains.

The more prepared you are for the growing pains, the quicker you move through them. The 3 most common forms of growing pains are:

1. Leadership

A leader’s ability to transfer knowledge into other parts of the business. “I started this business because I’m passionate about selling shoes, no one told me I had to become a teacher and a coach.” 

2. Structure

The organisational structure isn’t keeping pace with the growth of the business. This means that too many decisions are sitting in the leader’s role creating bottlenecks.

3. Manual Processes

Systems & processes are manual, inconsistent or non-existent. This is a result of there being too much knowledge in people’s heads creating inefficiencies.

We will be delving into each of these 3 points at more depth in a series of upcoming blogs and videos, culminating in a ‘Growing Pains’ workshop on April 6th.

Stay tuned…