4 Issues Start-Ups Must Address to Grow

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The majority of my time is spent speaking to innovative Start-Ups who want to grow.

They are all snowflakes. Baby unicorns.

Fledgling Zuckerbergs and Dorseys waiting to take flight.

Despite their "uniqueness", the problems these businesses encounter on the path from David to Goliath are anything but.

4 common trends have emerged from my conversations with hundreds of Start-Ups and SMBs!

1) Automation of Processes

"The future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed" William Gibson, The Economist, December 4, 2003

When processes work well, they can significantly improve efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction. Small businesses pushing for growth are in a continual state of flux with refinements and tweaks to systems happening everyday. Ultimately any successful process needs to serve the overall goal of your business. This is why automation needs to be baked in from the get-go to make scale easier to achieve.

Have you ever spent several joyless hours working on a spreadsheet, meticulously checking formulas while thinking "Shouldn't this be automated?". The answer is “Yes of course it should be!”. That level of automation is available today. Audit the time people in your business spend doing things that require the processing power that technology can provide. Understand that the cost of not doing this is losing a competitive edge in the marketplace and course-correct accordingly.

2) Delegation of Approvals

“No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.” – Andrew Carnegie

Bottlenecks happen. The flow of information can run smoothly until it requires final sign off from the relevant C-level executive. Approvals need to be seamless, trackable, intuitive and embedded into both your external and internal communication systems. If your sign off process requires employees to chase bosses that is a waste of time. It should be (and can be) as simple as receiving a notification on your phone, hitting a "thumbs up" button before moving to the next task at hand.

3) Harmonisation of Systems

"Music, to create harmony, must investigate discord" Plutarch.

Replace "Music" with "Business" in the quote above to get a sense of what I'm attempting to articulate. When all the separate functions within a business are working in harmony to achieve a well defined goal, scale is simpler to attain. As growth occurs, tools and systems are often added ad-hoc across different functions such as sales, service and marketing. This approach leads to disconnected systems that do not place the customer at the heart of your organisation. My advice when talking daily to SMBs is to start with the end in mind. Acquire technology that will allow your business to scale and work for you today as well as 5 years down the road. If you have to rip and replace at regular intervals that is a waste of time and money.

4) Democratisation of This Article

I lied. Sorry. I want no.4 to come from you. I'm interested in understanding what you feel is a problem for Start Ups and Small Businesses. Please share your perspective in the comments below.