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Growing Leaders
Will you be planning some growth for your company? Will you be planning some growth for yourself and your leadership skills? Entrepreneurs often underestimate - or totally overlook - the challenges that growth will place on their leadership and management skills. Just as the company will be undergoing major upheavals as it grows, you will be changing your relationship to the company. Many of the traits and talents that served you so well in a smaller company will become hurdles to be overcome.
John Hamm writes about this in Why Entrepreneurs Don't Scale in the Harvard Business Review (9/02). He notes, "A leader who scales is able to jettison habits and skills that have outlived their usefulness and adapt to new challenges along the way."
Hamm identifies four tendencies that work at some stage for business leaders but become "Achillies' heels" or weak spots as the company grows:
A tendency to loyalty to comrades, those who were there from the beginning or who lived through tough times even when those comrades are giving signs of failure or an inability to keep up with the changes that growth demands. Hamm calls this failure on a leader's part to grow with the company "stubborn loyalty, at the expense of an organization's success," and notes that it is extremely common in growing companies.
I heartily concur. The remodeler must make some tough decisions as to who has the skills to take the company to the next level and who doesn't. Some who can do their present jobs well will stay but not progress to new levels of management. Others, even though they are liked and respected and cared about, will have to leave for other opportunities.
A tendency to task orientation or focusing on the job at hand. Leaders who fail to become more strategic end up with an ever-growing to-do list and a blurring of priorities. "Leaders able to scale…learn to extract three or four high-level goals …and focus their teams…" notes Hamm. There are remodelers who own $3 million dollar companies and report spending 2 hours working on the company (as differentiated from in the company). This simply won't fly. Bigger companies need - demand - management and leadership time that only an owner can provide. They call out for a strategic vision and direction against which every activity is measured. There are systemic problems, people problems, economic problems. As a company grows, risk grows and the remodeler has to be reading the vital signs and motivating folks to move in the right direction. A few hours a week as a company grows to multi-million volume, simply won't do it.
A tendency to be singleminded which can turn into tunnel vision as the company grows. The owner of a growing company is much like the clown who has to keep many plates spinning in the air. They can't focus just on sales or just on estimating, there are many endeavors that must be recognized, acknowledged and prioritized.
A tendency to work in isolation. This trait can be powerful in an entrepreneur and disastrous in leading a larger company with an increasing number of stakeholders. There are a growing number of employees and clients and subs and suppliers and a leader. Without losing sight of the priorities, the remodeler has to be in the right place with the right person at the right time. This takes new skills and personal growth.
These four tendencies of an entrepreneur work for a small start-up company but restrict the growth and success of a larger enterprise. As Hamm notes, leaders who grow "make concerted, sometimes uncomfortable efforts to do what doesn't come naturally to them for the team's sake."
So as you plan next year and look at what might be required to grow your company, don't forget to include yourself and your skills in the decision.
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Remodelers Advantage Inc.
535 Main Street, Suite 211
Laurel, MD 20707
ofc: 301-490-5620
fax: 301-498-6869
Info@RemodelersAdvantage.com