Why do I need to grow? I’m happy with the status quo. How do I grow without the growing pains?
How do we measure our true performance and organisation strengths upon which we can grow and build a sustainable future? Does our technology help us define and deliver our strategy?
Realizing the dream requires growth
We all started out in business with a dream. Even as an employee, I started work with passions and desires to impact and change things, to make a difference, to be valued and to deliver value. As a volunteer, I have regularly and persistently given my time to support a worthy cause. As a business owner, I long to see the day where people are truly empowered with smart tools to achieve marvelous things.
True growth for me, comes personally from surrounding myself with people who want to grow, and keep inspiring me and spurring me on to greater things. As a business it comes from having a deliberate plan, a real regular independent review, a fresh perspective, those who challenge the status quo, challenge my thinking, and inspire my creativity. Do you have someone in your business that can give you that challenge?
Managing expansion through strong partnerships
There are many benefits that come from growth. Everything expands, more prospects, more clients, more work to deliver, more products to create, more administrative work, more late nights….
The challenge is to be able to scale and expand or contract as the need arises. To grow the team if necessary, to manage higher volumes with better systems and more efficient processes.
With the right mix of internal and external support, quality systems and processes, less administration is required and the potential is there for more capacity without the late nights.
I have seen, and see more and more today, small agile teams with the right systems delivering exponentially more than their competitors with much larger overheads and more “clunky” systems that require more manual effort. We partner with many of these today. Their innovations and capacity support and multiply our capacity. We can literally deliver results today weeks sooner, at a lower cost, supported by smart technology and agile partners, than we could even a year ago.
Ethics must be the foundation for solid growth.
It is funny how that with exponentially more tools and applications to choose from today, and some 1200 technology partners to choose from and growing, we come back more and more to first principles in Business. For us it is fundamentally about ethics. If we share common values and these can be demonstrated, then we have a solid foundation to move forward. We have as one of our founding partners, one of the most skilled Salesforce.com experts in Asia Pacific. We gave him his very first job, when he left Salesforce.com. My question to him was “I know how skilled you are, but can I trust you with our client?” He has demonstrated time and time again that he can be trusted. Working with him we have been able to leverage our strengths and collectively do tremendously creative things that neither he nor us could have achieved alone.
Sustainable growth requires empowered knowledge workers
An article from McKinsey’s was given to me by a colleague several years ago, the principles of which underpin our business and those of our clients today. Their view was that if you could provide the knowledge worker (smart “hands on” people that deal with more complex tasks) with an agile system that empowered them to be more productive, and make more informed decisions – you would achieve sustainable competitive advantage. The routine tasks then and increasingly so now, can be automated, no question. Making systems that handle the more complex “admin” tasks are significantly more challenging, but if effectively designed and used by engaged knowledge workers, amazing growth is possible. This is the essence of our Streamline offering, we provide a means to significantly reduce effort across the entire business, and a way to leverage the “smarts” of your team in creative ways.
Technology empowers strategy
We have been asked from time to time, “which should we choose first – Strategy or Technology?”. For us both elements but be effectively blended. Given the tremendous power to disrupt industries from the effective use of technology – think Uber or AirBnB, why would you in this day and age, think strategy and then consider technology as an after thought? Fundamentally for us the effective deployment of dynamic systems and seamless processes, provides a mechanism to accelerate the achievement of your goals. It empowers your team, it lifts their capability and capacity, it measures progress it informs and defines outcomes. Our flexible tools, coupled with our agile deployment and refinement approach, adapt as market conditions change and strategic goals shift.
On our team we have some of the best in the business in defining growth objectives, performing market research, mitigating risk, managing transitions, harnessing innovations and creative thinking. Talk with us today about growth options for your business.
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