You probably know the feeling...
Business has been going ok. You've created some reliable revenue streams and have some pretty loyal clients. And employees seem engaged.
Something's missing, though. Despite your best efforts, breaking through to the next level of growth feels frustratingly out of reach.
Sound familiar? You're not alone because plenty of successful businesses like yours hit some kind of indefinable growth ceiling. In this Insight, we'll look at some of the reasons behind this phenomenon and provide some tips on how to break through.
Key takeaways
Barriers to growth commonly stem from multiple, interconnected factors
A systematic assessment of your current position is a really important input into deciding what changes to make
Small adjustments in key drivers are often all that's needed to yield significant improvements (rather than a "big bang" approach)
Don't overlook the need to do more of what you already do well - building on your strengths is relatively easy and incredibly impactful
An in-depth business diagnostic will reveal existing misalignments and hidden opportunities
Understanding the "growth ceiling"
We suspect most businesses have bumped up against the growth ceiling at some point in their development. It usually shows itself as a seemingly inexplicable inability to push beyond your current operational level. And it shows up even though you've ticked the box on all the objectives you've set for the business.
It's important to differentiate this from a scale up situation - you may have already been through that process in fact. More often than not, breaking through a growth ceiling can be achieved with fine-tuning and optimisation rather than the transformation that a scale-up generally requires.
It's like this....you have all the essential components in place and they're working ok, but something's getting in the way of the business taking its next steps. And therein lies the challenge - identifying exactly what's holding you back and what you need to do to address those things.
Growth barriers are often hiding in plain sight
It's challenging.
While the effects are clearly felt - things like slow revenue growth, client numbers topping out or employees getting a little grumpy - it's harder to identify the underlying causes.
For example, you might notice an increase in employee turnover, impacting business performance. While there are plenty of obvious reasons this might be happening (like lagging the market in pay rates), a deeper analysis could find that your employees don't feel connected to the strategy and objectives of the business. That's a key factor that influences employee engagement.
The message here is don't assume anything and don't accept the obvious.
If you really want to break through the growth ceiling, you need to be prepared to invest time and effort in understanding causes rather than symptoms.
A comprehensive business diagnostic will help...a lot
A good doctor doesn't accept a patient's persistent headaches at face value. They'll look more deeply into other potentially related symptoms that the patient might be feeling before prescribing any treatment. And when you take your car for a service, provided it's relatively modern, the mechanic will typically hook it up to a system and run a diagnostic to uncover any hidden issues.
These are simple but relevant comparisons.
Just like a human body or a modern motor car, your business is a complex system with many interdependent components. A comprehensive diagnostic considers multiple dimensions of your business, including the clarity and breadth of understanding of your business strategy and purpose, client-related issues, branding and marketing, people matters and operations, among others.
A really valuable diagnostic will look at how these dimensions are connected and how changes in one impact some or all of the others. It will also seek input from a range of people in the business, thus identifying where misalignments exist - that's critical.
Four key dimensions of growth
There are others, but let's start with four...
Engaging with your market - every business needs a reliable supply of the right clients who readily pay the right price for the products or services it delivers. That's only achievable with a clear understanding of who you're targeting and what they value in their relationship with your business. A diagnostic will help you focus on the potential for small adjustments in your branding, marketing or service offer that could unlock significant growth.
Operational effectiveness - many businesses focus heavily on efficiency above and beyond anything else. Naturally, business operations need to be efficient, but that doesn't necessarily optimise them for higher performance levels. Effective operations are those built around client needs and outcomes first and foremost because, let's face it, they're more interested in the value you're creating for them rather than your internal efficiencies. A diagnostic brings operational effectiveness into the spotlight.
Team capability - in other words, the collective skills, motivation, engagement and capacity of your people. This is arguably the dimension that can have the most significant hidden impact on growth. By delving into people-related issues and seeking input from some or all of your employees, a diagnostic is an excellent tool for identifying misalignments and identifying areas for high-impact change.
Clarity of strategy and business purpose - a key impediment to effective growth is a lack of alignment between day-to-day activities and the purpose and strategy of your business. Moreover, the extent to which your leaders and employees understand and buy into both of these big-picture drivers really makes a difference. If you're unsure how aligned your team is on this front, a diagnostic is just what you need.
As we already mentioned, your business is a complex system. Adjusting one growth lever will invariably impact one, or more or potentially even all of the others. A full appreciation of how this might play out in your business is a significant growth booster.
From insight to action
As ever, identifying challenges is one thing. Creating actionable solutions is an entirely different matter.
This is where a good diagnostic will stand out from the crowd. It won't just provide you with a list of problems to solve. It will identify and affirm the current strengths of your business - those you know about and some that may surprise you. This is an important contribution to you cracking the growth ceiling because while you can't ignore those areas that need "fixing", it's far easier to continue to do the things you're already doing well and do more of them.
A good diagnostic will also provide a roadmap for actions needed to create the conditions for you to get to the next level. It will also help you prioritise the actions you need to take so that you can focus first on the highest impact changes. Wholesale, across-the-board changes rarely deliver the best outcomes.
The GrowthCatalyst diagnostic certainly addresses these issues. We offer a full-day post-diagnostic workshop to help businesses through the prioritisation process and the creation of action plans and accountabilities to ensure "things get done".
Measuring progress and impact
This is way too important to be left to chance.
A diagnostic provides a valuable baseline measure of where your business is placed to meet its growth aspirations. With that in place, it's essential to put in place a process to measure how you're tracking with the initiatives you identify as a result of the diagnostic.
You could use a diagnostic that "scores" the various growth dimensions, revisiting the exercise regularly to see how those scores are moving.
Consider how frequently you want to review your progress - quarterly is usually a good starting point - and how you want to do that. You could set up an internal group to carry out those reviews. However, we'd recommend establishing a more formal Advisory Board structure comprising external expertise to maximise objectivity in the review process.
However you choose to monitor and measure, be consistent and deliberate about it. There's no better way to ensure maximum impact over time.
That's a lot
It really is.
But breaking through the growth ceiling rarely, if ever, happens by accident. It needs a systematic approach to understanding your current position, your specific growth objectives and creating and executing an action plan to realise those objectives.
Starting with a diagnostic takes the guesswork out of the process and maximises your chances of success.
The key is not to treat this as a one-off exercise but as the foundation of an ongoing program of improvement and optimisation. You'll identify some quick wins, but it's the structure you can put around your longer-term initiatives that makes the diagnostic and ongoing measurement and review so valuable.
Is your business stuck under a growth ceiling?
Want to break through?
A conversation with a GrowthCatalyst adviser could be just what you need. We'll walk you through our Business Profiler and discuss the benefits you can expect it to deliver as you work towards your growth aspirations.
Contact us to arrange a face-to-face or virtual conversation.
Alternatively, you can book a time for an initial discussion here.
In other news...
GrowthCatalyst has joined forces with several like-minded professionals to form the advisory group Konektis (check us out here). Collectively, the Konektis team provides integrated, multi-disciplinary advice to SMEs to deliver a "one strategy" outcome.
Take the Konektis Pulse Check and receive immediate, actionable ideas to grow your business.
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