December 2003
The following article was first published in the Eastern Daily Press' 'The Business' on 2 December 2003
Growth is the key to survival
Last week, I was privileged to speak to a large gathering of businesspeople from around the region at the Learning Networks Leadership Conference. They were quite a special group, in that a high proportion had been operating their businesses for over 10 years. “So what?”, I hear you ask.
Because, if you own or run a small business that's been in existence for ten years, congratulate yourself! If you're still in business after that time, you're part of an elite 4% of the business community. In the UK over 80% of all small businesses fail within the first five years of operation, according to DTI figures. And 80% of those remaining fail within the next five years.
So why do some succeed and others don't? There can be many reasons, but being open to change and being prepared to seek advice from people who can help you is probably one of the most important ways to ensure the ongoing success of your business. Business owners who don't try to do everything themselves and know when to look outside when necessary are positioning themselves and their business for a more successful long term future.
Having survived, however, it's probably time to think about growth. I believe that a business is, in many ways, just like a plant or an animal in that it's either growing or it's dying. There is no in-between. So, I often use the `G.R.O.W.' model when working with clients, to put some structure to a programme for long-term business improvement.
G.R.O.W. helps a business owner look at the four fundamentals of taking a business to a higher level:
G - is for goals. Successful business leaders set stretching goals for themselves and their team. A clear goal provides a vision, a destination towards which every effort should be committed. Not having a clear goal can make trying to grow a business frustrating if not actually futile.
R - is for reality. Having set ambitious goals, the owner needs to understand very clearly the reality of the current situation - a baseline against which future progress can be measured.
O - is for options. Knowing where you are and where you're going is great, but how are you going to get there? This is when all of the possible ways of progressing need to be explored. Creative, `out of the box' thinking, idea generation, risk analysis should all be exploited to give you the best chance of success. Above all, the recognition and acceptance that you and your team will probably have to behave differently is crucial.
W - is for the will to make things happen. In business, as in other endeavours, the leader must live the vision, or no one else will. W is also for putting into action the ideas you've developed; the who, what, where and when.
So, don't be afraid to ask for help when necessary, but, most importantly, don't be afraid to change the way you work now, in order to build a more successful business in the future. To quote W. Edwards Deming - the American statistician who helped to get industrial Japan back on its feet in the 1950s - "It's not necessary to change..... survival is not mandatory".