As your company grows, you will face a number of exciting, unforeseen challenges that might never have crossed your mind earlier. These challenges will test the mettle of your organization and its mission to provide greater value to a broader range of markets. How you handle these challenges is what defines how robust of a new offering you have and how meaningful it is to the additional markets you might be serving. A solid strategy of mapping out your precise goals and objectives is undoubtedly essential. However, the approach for your company's growth should first start first from cultivating the right attitude within your employees, and within yourself.

CORRECT ATTITUDE

Navigating your company's growth starts with yourself and your own mindset. "An open mind solves all problems" , "Be always curious" - Jonathan Furman, Founder and CEO of Furman Transformation reminds us. There isn't one correct strategy for growing our business as each terrain and each hurdle varies by context. A game-plan in-advance is good, but it simply is a template. The number of unanticipated problems simply can't all be mapped out in advance. As the complexity of our world expands into uncharted territory, it's increasingly important to develop a strong mental attitude to face the challenges that come to our business as we grow. Such a mindset involves honing a clear, open, broad perspective that seeks out new possibilities without prejudice. From such a mindset, clear options for growing your company will naturally fall into place.

SHORING UP YOUR CAPACITY

Keeping in mind there are multiple choices one can make, depending on your personal goals and depending on what options arise in your mind. Some might be exciting. Some might be laborious. Some might even induce fear. However, we should always be in tune with our capacity for taking on next steps. For instance, you might find the opportunity to disrupt an entire market paradigm with your brilliant product. But along with it would come a tumultuous roller-coaster ride filled with chaos. It might be thrilling, but it also might be more intense than what you desire.

Or, on the other hand, you might decide you would prefer to quietly provide an upgrade to a stable market with a few new benefits and increased quality. This offering might not be groundbreaking and your growth might be linear rather than exponential.

However, you might prefer a more conservative approach such as this as it affords you greater clarity of mind, and sharper clarity of analysis, to chart your course.

SCALING YOUR PRODUCTIVITY

While growing, we often neglect to realize that we ourselves are growing along with our business. A business just doesn't come up all by itself. It requires the people working in it to come up along the way. As we grow, we might find that the productivity and effectiveness with which we carried when we had fewer demands hasn't kept up. Developing consistent habits and tools, as well as continuing to invest in building more and more solid workflow processes, always deserve a place in our planning to ensure that we never lose sight of our ability to scale ourselves along with our company.

CAPTURING THE PULSE OF THE MARKET

Once you have set your mindset, determined your capacity, and establish a path to scale your personal productivity, you need to connect with markets as they exist. At the end of the day, a business has to connect with the pulse of the customer. 42% percent of startups fail simply because they've failed to anticipate what the target audience is actually looking for.

SUMMARY

As you establish yourself, your business will inevitably grow in revenue, offerings, and markets, impacting the lives of more and more people along the way. There are many possibilities which will arise, many of which will seem to contradict one another. However, one central piece remains -- cultivating your company's growth starts with cultivating yourself first.

See the rest here:
Finding The Right Approach To Your Companies Growth - Southeast Missourian (blog)