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When the Founder Is the Rainmaker: How to Scale Without Losing the Spark
In many founder-led businesses, the founder isn’t just the leader—they’re also the best (and often only) rainmaker. They land the big deals. They have the trusted relationships. They know the pitch inside and out because they are the pitch.
It works—until it doesn’t.
As the business grows, this model creates a bottleneck. Every new opportunity depends on one and only person. And it’s the same person every time. But there’s a downside. When that person is also responsible for running the business, mentoring the team, and shaping the vision, something eventually gives.
Disrupting Your Marketplace: Are You Ready for What the Future Delivers?
Tue, Jul 10, 2018 — In 1907 – at a time when we as a nation weren’t that far removed from receiving mail via “Pony Express”– a visionary young fellow named James “Jim” Casey borrowed the princely sum of $100 and founded a small company called American Messenger Service in his hometown of Seattle, WA. More than a few years – and millions of package movements later – Casey’s company grew into the hugely successful United Parcel Service – forever changing the way packages were delivered with frequency, and setting a new standard by which Ben Franklin’s venerable U.S. Postal Service would struggle to meet.
The Role of People and Organizational Structure in Digital Growth for Small- and Mid-Sized Businesses (SMBs)
Thu, Jun 21, 2018 — This is the third in a series of articles focused on helping executives in small- and mid-sized businesses utilize digital technologies effectively to assist in accelerating revenues and profits. If you missed the first two articles, you can find the first one here and the second one here. The previous articles included an introduction to four major ways digital technologies can help your business, described a spectrum of technologies and a possible implementation roadmap, and associated digital proficiency with enhanced business performance. The second article also took a deep look at how business process needs and priorities should help guide your digital paths. In that article, I also introduced the “USA” model for digital transformation.
How Platform Capabilities Sustain Business Growth
Tue, Jun 19, 2018 — If you have been following this series of articles on sustainable business growth, you know that we have arrived at our fourth topic: Platforms. If you missed the previous articles in the series, you can read Article 1 (The Difference Between a Growth Plan and a Growth Engine), Article 2 (Best Practices in Processes) and Article 3 (People and Organizational Best Practices).
Why Growing a Business is Harder Than Ever
Mon, Jun 18, 2018 — One of my daughters recently read Of Mice and Men in English class. Since I also read it in high school, it was fun to chat about the story as she progressed through the book. I wondered how Steinbeck came up with the title. It turns out he used a quote from a poem written by Robert Burns in 1785. The contemporary translation is, “the best-laid plans of mice and men.” The two main characters, Lennie and George, have a plan for a new life. Unfortunately, their reality ends up being far from what they hoped.
Find Your Road to Growth: How to Identify and Move Beyond Random Acts of Marketing
Tue, Jun 12, 2018 — When I meet with CEOs in my role as a fractional CMO, it’s usually at a time when their company’s growth, revenues, or market share – or some combination of the three – have flattened. Often, these CEOs are finding that their current marketing efforts aren’t delivering the results they expect. And in most cases, their companies are in “scale-up” mode with substantial emphasis on sales and operational excellence. An unintended consequence of this critical stage in a business’s maturation process is that marketing is often relegated to a meandering series of one-off tactics such as glossy sales sheets, the occasional trade show, search engine optimization, and a basic website with the intent of meeting in-the-moment needs. We call these types of tactics “random acts of marketing,” and while company leaders mean well in creating them, the reality is they cost money, don’t get results, and divert attention of the marketing staff from higher-value activities. Worse yet, they consume precious resources that could fund and execute a strategy to support growth and build value.
How People and Organizational Capabilities Sustain Business Growth
Thu, May 31, 2018 — If you have been following this series of articles on sustainable business growth, you know that we have arrived at our third topic. The first article introduced the difference between a growth plan (singular event) and a growth engine (recurring system). The theme we developed in that piece supported the need to go beyond growth plans to create sustained growth performance. Our argument that while growth plans are good, growth engines are better.
Beyond the Latest Tech: Four Essentials to Leading the New Workforce
Wed, May 23, 2018 — Let’s play a quick game of word association. When I say, “remote worker,” what comes to mind? Is it a 20-something creative-type sipping on a Starbucks latte? How about a global team videoconferencing in real-time? Yes, it’s easy to conjure up a stylized version of an offsite freelancer or employee, because the interest in (and need for) remote, fractional, and temporary work is growing at a breakneck pace. Because today’s most talented employees prefer the flexibility and quality of life that the new way of working provides, leading enterprises and emerging businesses alike are adopting flexible policies to embrace the new normal.
How Healthy Business Management Processes Sustain Business Growth
Tue, May 15, 2018 — In our first blog of the series, we defined the difference between a growth plan and a growth engine. In that discussion, we defined a growth plan as a singular event that identify future revenue and profit streams and identify capabilities, assets, and competencies the business needs to build to take advantage of future growth opportunities. As we define it however, a growth engine is not an event or a document or a plan, a growth engine is a system of integrated and replicable growth focused processes that support and enable sustained growth performance over a number of years. That blog included a brief questionnaire that helped you assess your company's ability to put a growth engine in place.
The Role of Processes in Digital Growth for Small- and Mid-Sized Businesses (SMBs)
Mon, May 14, 2018 — This is the second in a series of articles on helping executives in small- and mid-sized businesses utilize digital technologies effectively to assist in accelerating revenues and profits. The previous article included an introduction to four major ways digital technologies can help your business, described a spectrum of technologies and a possible implementation roadmap, and associated digital proficiency with enhanced business performance. It also included a 10-question survey to help you set an internal benchmark for your digital programs. In this article, I’ll provide practical guidance on where to start a journey for those businesses with a minimal digital growth path today.