Four Areas of Growth That Should Always Be in Sync

Spring and summer are times of growth. Leaders and organizations can learn something from these fruitful seasons of life. In this newsletter, I share a few ideas about how an organization’s people, systems, and meeting structure must grow in a way that roughly resembles revenue growth — or quickly pay the consequences.

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.

—Henry Ford

4 Areas of Growth That Must Be in Sync

In Steve Graves’ fantastic book The Five Tasks, he writes that one of the core functions of leadership is guiding the resources of an organization. Whether financial, technological, and/or relational, every business needs the right resources in order to grow and achieve its goals — and it’s a leader’s job to oversee this process.

In particular, there are four areas that need to grow and scale in rhythm with one another. If any of these are out of sync with the other pieces, you’ll start to see disruption, incongruence, and slow downs.

1) Revenue

You’ve got to know how (and how quickly) your revenue is growing. “Up and to the right” is obviously a good thing, but being able to analyze and forecast that growth will allow you to scale the other areas of resourcing that also matter. As a leader, you don’t want revenue outpacing or lagging behind the other pieces of your business, either of which can hamper your goals. So while a raw revenue number is obviously important, the shape of its growth is perhaps even more critical to business operations.

2) People

What happens when your revenue grows way ahead of your talent? It can be a massive problem for any organization, whether you’re scaling from $10 million to $100 million or $100 million to $1 billion. If you’re growing so fast that your employees can’t handle the influx of customers, operational demands, and critical support work, your growth will eventually come crashing to a halt. A leader must always ensure that there is a team in place, with proper mentorship and development, that can handle your organization’s pace of revenue growth.

3) Meetings

As a leader, you should be adjusting the rhythm of your meetings as your organization grows. It may seem less important than the other items on this list, but make no mistake that either too many meetings or too few meetings can each lead to information distortion and a decline in productivity. Your meeting cadence should not be the same at $10 million in revenue as it will be at $100 million — it needs to evolve right along with the other facets of your business.

4) Systems and Processes

Finally, a leader must ensure that the organization’s systems and processes are growing in lockstep with the other three areas on this list. As your revenue grows, it’s inevitable that you’re going to break some of the processes you’ve built and your needs on a system level will become more complex. No matter what, you’ll eventually have to adjust and perhaps even overhaul your processes in order to meet your goals.

Application

While these four areas of growth don’t have to accelerate in exact lockstep with each other, they do need to be in sync and maintain an even rhythm. When revenue grows, be sure you’re looking at and evaluating the people equation, your meeting cadence, and your systems/processes.

As a leader, write out the four buckets on a regular basis and indicate green, yellow, or red.

• Green: This bucket is growing in sync with the org.
• Yellow: We have identifiable risk of disconnect.
• Red: We are behind and need to pour in significant investment.

Whatever area is out of sync in a particular month or quarter should then get special attention to ensure that your organization maintains its path to growth.

Summer Reading

Pick up The Optimist: A Case for the Fly Fishing Life by David Coggins for your summer reading list.