Structuring Advice for Rapidly Growing Start-Ups

The fact your start-up is now growing is great news. You’re in good company, pardon the pun. The fact you aren’t one of the 90% of start-ups that fail in their first year means you are doing something right.

Now, you’re at that bursting point stage. The next level of your company is rapidly approaching and you need to make some decisions on how you want to proceed. What you implement determines if you succeed, stall, or fall apart. To help you out, here is some structural advice for rapidly growing start-ups.

Decide On Your Role

There’s a point in your start-up where you may do things on your own or have a small group to work with you. Regardless, you tend to be involved in all aspects of the company. Presently, with it rapidly growing, you must decide on the new role you should take.

Remaining as the main point person for everything your business does is not the way to go. It’s going to stop you from creating new products and cementing more client relationships. Thus, you probably want to step back and become the owner or president instead of everything in-between.

This releases an enormous amount of pressure on you. Day-to-day operations are delegated to managers and supervisors. Administrative tasks are handled by staff members. The lack of worry about these items clears space in your mind to focus on innovations.

Implement Agile Development

The concept of agile development was founded in the 1980s. It transformed the way software companies produced new items. Instead of putting everything into one release, they did it in incremental steps. Agile development is what companies like Microsoft and Oracle use today to introduce new items to existing products.

Enterprise agile development works for your company even if you don’t produce software. Companies like Conexiam offer training packages that introduce this form of operations into a business along with an Enterprise Architecture (EA) foundation. Through the processes provided, the focus of your rapidly growing company turns to teamwork. Not only within a certain area but between departments.

The main focus is on communication, which is critical when your start-up is transforming into a full-fledged business. Agile development curbs confusion by incorporating project managers and other higher-level personnel to be mediators. As a result, issues are resolved before they become too cumbersome.

Develop The Proper Interview Structure

A rapidly growing start-up needs a mix of new hires. Some should be subject matter experts (SMEs) who are incredibly knowledgable about your business sector. Others should be people who can learn and grow with the company.

However, the latter group can’t be comprised of people who absorb the necessary knowledge to move forward at another company. You need an increased rate of retention to maintain top levels of productivity and customer service.

Obtaining these properties starts at the interview. You need the right structure to bring in potential hires and get your questions answered. Additionally, you need to be transparent with the information you provide to these individuals. Let them know everything you expect of them.

When you do this, you should get a truthful answer to, “Is this something you’re interested in?” If not, then you will start to know when they’re being honest or not. Though it might take a few tries, you’ll eventually end up with a staff that believes in your ideas and goals and wants to work hard to achieve them.

Don’t Go Beyond Your Needs

Some start-up owners go overboard when their company rapidly grows. As a result, they overhire or make investments that are too large for their level of sales and service. For instance, they might purchase a 10,000 square-foot office to prepare for future levels of growth.

This is something you don’t want to do. You need to take a measured response to your growth. Even if it seems to be spilling out of control you can’t overspend to even things out. If necessary, write down your needs and speak to a business consultant to get an idea of your next steps.

In the end, you can’t panic when you notice rapid growth for your start-up. Even if you have to hold up on product or client development, work things out to successfully break through the next level.