Scaling up-Are you really ready?

 

Dear Farmer,


 As always I am happy to answer your questions and offer thoughts on all things Agribusiness and Leadership related. Without wasting your time I want to hone in on your question on what you need to consider for sustainable expansion aka scaling up. This stage of assessing your capacity for expansion can seem like a time wasting and tedious process but trust me, it will save you a lot of money, anguish and relationships. Always keep in mind that studies show that roughly 66% of the fastest growing start ups shrink, stagnate or fail in a period of 5-8 years. It is important to begin with an end in mind, what is the Expansion Destination? I will also ask questions around  Personal Leadership and Management Skills, Organisational Culture, Product Demand, Human Capital, Financing,  Infrastructure,  and Relationship Management. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? I have split this response into two letters so that you don’t feel overwhelmed and suffer from paralysis by analysis.

 

Expansion Destination-Vision Casting

What unit of measurement are you using to define expansion? Will it be an increase in production output, increase in sales revenue, increase in the number of markets, increase in human capital engaged, increase in profitability or all of the above? What are the specific numbers/targets attached to these metrics? Before you get excited and start throwing random numbers at me,What is the basis of these numbers that describe your destination? Are they based on historical performance, national/industry statistics or they are random figure. Where are you currently in those same metrics? We can not map out a route for journey if we do not know where we are even if we know the destination. I can see you rolling your eyes because of the questions, I have always said as a Facilitator my job is not to prescribe, rather it is to ask questions that will help you as we walk the journey  to your growth.

 

Personal Leadership and Management Skills


 and Organisational Culture are some of those subtle things that can make or break an organization even it has all other things in place. As the organisation grows, your job as the Head Honcho is less of hands on operations and more of people management. Your ability to cast the vision well, create an enabling environment, manage yourself and your team will help your business not become a failure to launch statistic.  What leadership styles and personality traits are required for this stage of the game? What are your dominant leadership styles and traits, are they helpful or hindering the process? You need to manage yourself and your character because you could become the enemy of your own progress, one study indicates that 99% of us believe we are self-aware while only 10-15% of us actually are and this could affect our teams’ chances of success by 50%.

 

 

 In my next letter I will delve into Organisational Culture, Financing, Infrastructure and Relationship Management. If you are serious about growing, I recommend you get a coach whose job is to ask questions, see through the excuses and ego blind spots. On your own you could miss some very important bits that could cost you heavily in the future.

 

I hope this has been helpful and that you will take this as an opportunity to organise your thoughts into an actionable plan.

 

Till the next time,

 Yours

Rutendo

 

 

 

 

 

 

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