Moving on

I’ve had a think about my growing pains and now I know what I need to do. It’s time for my role to change.

Great comments from last week’s blog. A point of reference, though: the title I wrote for the blog was ‘Not always a bed of roses’ – the sub-editor changed the headline to ‘Personal crisis’.  

The business is thriving, the growth rates and what we deliver every day for our suppliers and customers is nothing short of amazing.

The point for writing the blog is that different skills are required at different stages. Running a $12 million business is vastly different to running a business of five people and $1 million. And next year it is likely to be $20 million – as long as the right structures and people are in place to support it.

I know that I will continue to provide innovation, ideas and inspiration. My role remains vision, values and alignment and being the public face of our brand with lots of stakeholders. However, I cannot any more think I can do it all; just popping in to any area “to sort a few things out” then off I go to the next no longer works.

It is time to appoint a seasoned general management team. I recently appointed a senior HR leader (as per previous blog); this was the first of the senior roles. Over the past week I have worked with others – both internal and external – developing plans, reviewing the foundations we need to underpin the next exciting phase. We will have two more general managers in place in a couple of weeks.

All the comments really point out that every business has growing pains, there is no such thing as a smooth ride. And they often take a personal toll. But it is very much about putting it into perspective and keeping it in context.

I’m ready for the next phase.

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Comments

Ken Wood from itontap.com writes: Of all the business problems that you can face, coping with rapid (and presumably profitable) revenue growth is one of the best ones to have….