If you have a five-year plan for navigating growth in your company, there may come a time when you feel like you’re not making much progress on that plan. Maybe it looks like it’s going to take longer than you thought. That could be because you have not dealt with the immediate operational challenges of your business. You may intend for your business to be in a better position ultimately, but there may be a reluctance to do what it’s really going to take to get there. Embracing a growth mindset requires continual improvement.
Revamping a business takes capital and it takes people. It’s one thing to have a warm body in a job, but the challenge is to have the right person in the right role at the right time. The responsibility for developing other people, accountability, even communication becomes something to be conquered.
One challenging role to fill is middle-management. If a company is growing rapidly, there needs to be someone between the owner and the people who do the work. Promoting into that position is challenging. People who are very good at what they do, may not be natural-born managers. As the company starts to outpace their skills, they need to grow as well.
An important part of a long-range plan is staff growth. It’s useful to have a plan for career advancement within your company. It’s unfortunate to lose a good employee who decides to go to another company because they’re looking for opportunity, especially if that is an opportunity you were planning to offer them at some point in the future. It’s best to not leave your staff in the dark about their opportunities and your intentions.
Providing training to build skills is key to employee retention. Make sure your employees are ready to step into the role you have planned for them. Build a culture that communicates and supports your employees. With the skilled labor shortage dragging on much longer than most of us anticipated, your people are not only your best asset, they are getting to be harder and harder (and more expensive) to replace and train. Just as you would maintain your high-ticket equipment, it’s critical to invest in maintaining your staff.
That can also be the catalyst behind a growth mindset. Maybe it’s time to take the business to the next level to keep things interesting and challenging for your employees. In order for innovation to work well, you need to let your guard down and embrace the onslaught of technology.
Someone in your organization needs to make sure that everyone is being supported by the technology – that it is suited to everyone that uses it. Some people are not tech-oriented. They may not think in the same analytical way as another person. Your tech implementation needs to embrace all sectors of your company, and it should include the necessary training and development. Perhaps you can use reverse mentoring, pairing a tech-oriented person and pair them with someone who has real-world field experience. In that way you can get cross-collaboration between them and benefit from the best of both worlds.
Learn more insights on this topic by listening to episode 113 of the Bridging the Gap Podcast with guest Doug Howard of Remodelers Advantage.
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