CONSULT
Bringing the Tools You NeedExample Situation: Growing Pains
A young organization has made it through to rapid growth. Management has been pressed to get this far, but they made it by taking risks and putting in long hours of hard work. Now they find much more rapid growth is called for.
The challenge: Make the operation scalable, without losing what made you great in the first place.
Small organizations are agile, creative, and are willing to work double shifts when the need arises. But what if the need is to double in size again? Does everybody try to work 160 hours a week? Of course not. Small companies grow by rapid, often clever addition. However, sometimes they can only add so much, and then the approach falters.
Conversely, big companies work with scalable, systematized approaches, but there are shortcomings here, too. Converting to professional management relieves the pressure on the early entrepreneurs, but often at the expense of the culture that made them successful. These transitions can be painful, and sometimes they destroy the vitality that made the organization work in the first place. Only after that special spark is gone do they realize the loss.
We’ll Make it Scalable; You Make it Big.
That’s where the Bart Group comes in. We start with a lot of listening. We focus on that spark, preserve it, and use it to drive the new, scalable culture and its systems. We work in environments where a core group of people has created a set of methods and a culture that has brought them success. We absorb that culture through onsite work, documentation, interviews and getting a sense of what made the group successful. From there, we set up processes, guidelines, and trainings to onboard new people and locations.
Sometimes, founders and core groups don’t know exactly what made them successful, beyond working hard. Or perhaps they were in the right place, in the right market at the right time, and now, competitors are stepping up. In this instance, it may be necessary to support the key management group in crystallizing a core culture and a set of values that will guide the company going forward.
All this allows growth by multiplication rather than addition. Once we capture that information and lay it out so that new people and groups can access it without needing one-on-one mentoring, doubling in size (and more) becomes attainable, even on an aggressive schedule. Our vision is that soon you will be able to boast that you have Large Company Ability, Small Company Agility.
