 Startup
|
 Adolescence
|
 Maturity
|
|
Challenges
- Obtaining work
- Juggling different hats/roles
- So many things are new
- Appearing professional
|
Challenges
- Trying to manage this growing beast!
- How to get your people working together effectively
- Clarifying who will be responsible for what
- Determining how work will be efficiently done, without your micro management
- Drawing a line in the sand about what you do and don't do, as you realise not all work is profitable
|
Challenges
- Managing the complexity and size
- Making individual parts/units manageable without losing the synergies and leverage of how units fit into business strategies
- Turning high level strategies into day to day, ongoing results
-Continuing to innovate and grow
|
Typical Solutions
- Take any work you get
- Multitask
- Make it up as you go
|
Typical Solutions
- Trying to figure the above out yourself
- Expecting your staff to sort the above out
- Ignoring the above and watching your profitability decline while your blood pressure soars.
|
Typical Solutions
- Creating separate units/departments
- Undertaking 'Strategic Planning' & 'Strategy Rollout'
- Formalising more of the organisation's processes
- Centralising decision-making
- Undergoing Change Management
|
|
Management Need
- Time management
- Be a 'Jack of all trades'
- Be effective and economical
- Identify early points of leverage
|
Management Need
- Strategy clarification
- Organisational design - who does what, when and to what standard
- Systems development - decide how we get the work done
- People management - how to enable your people to perform their best - individually and together
- Feedback development - ensuring you have the necessary information to understand how your business is performing and where it can improve.
|
Management Need
- Strategy articulation in a way that all staff understand
- Strategic alignment that ensures all units understand how they work together and how they contribute
- Strategy implementation - how to turn long term strategy into daily action and results.
- Employee engagement that energies and develops the business
|
| |
The irony of it all...
Management probably doesn't come any harder than this.
At a time when you are starting to develop your management skills you are actually required to have a more comprehensive understanding of management issues than a manager in a bigger, more established business. This is because you are not only managing on a day to day basis - you are also setting up the whole management structure and mechanisms in your evolving business so it can continue to grow profitably.
|
The irony of it all...
Just when you think you have made to the top and you can call all the shots...surprise you'll need even greater collaboration and enabling skills.
A large business is a hairy beast with lots of complexity. It takes clear thinking to understand how all the units/parts work best together and even clearer communication to explain it all. As the leader you need to be able to articulate a clear identity and direction for your business in a way that all the parts can understand and identify with. Then you need to ensure that your management mechanisms facilitate alignment, collaboration and achievement by all your units and people.
|
