Setting the scale up leadership agenda
Imagine a moving staircase with very irregular steps, some very steep at the beginning, and no visibility on where it ends. Scaling up your business is comparable with climbing such a staircase — the direction assumed to be clear, the top unknown. The first two steps are the most challenging. Scaling the value proposition and your business, and building the team and the capabilities. Preparing yourself and your team to play in another league at a higher level. Realising this breakthrough to the next level in a very tight timeframe asks for a much more explicit and focused leadership agenda, contrary to what happens in most cases. The key elements of such a leadership agenda could be the following:
Next and Next-after-Next
Your scale up agenda compromises actions with a focus on the next step and the next- after-the-next — all consistent with a longer-term strategic aspiration and strategic intent. It brings a clear articulation on what the team must achieve within the next 6 months and within the next 18 months. The point of departure for your budget and financial planning is well validated and understood. A budget cycle addressing ‘the next’ — fully deployed within the team — and one addressing ‘the next-after- the-next’.
Developing a budget in a scale up is a learning and deploying effort, but one needs to build up a reliable performance track record whilst learning. So the budget should be stretched, but not too stretched.
Critical few must-win battles
By definition, your resources in a scaling company are limited (if not very limited) and you’re building capabilities along the way. Scaling up is learning in action. Therefore: Avoid death by a thousand projects. Make choices, and learn from them.
- In which process do you need to be outstanding and leading? Where can you follow others? Amplify your strengths, invest in differentiators, only work on weaknesses that would disqualify you to play.
- Which process do you set up for ‘tight’ standardised operations? Where do you stimulate creativity? Bring discipline into your operations.
- Which customers help you (and not the competition) to create a lasting impact? Partner up.
- Avoid the ‘long tail’. Remember: Cash is king.
Your scale up agenda has to be adaptive and in line with external and internal feedback. This implies a process of tight road mapping whilst acting and constantly learning.
100% alignment on the ‘moments of truth’
The leadership agenda is of course not the agenda of the leader alone. It is a team — or even a company agenda. This requires from the leader and the executive team an on-going ‘coalition building’ throughout the business, facilitating a process that co-creates 100% alignment at ‘moments of truth’ around the right issues at the right ‘place’ in the scale up transformation process.
Leadership team ‘under construction’
In lots of scale up companies, the leadership team is a body that remains ‘under construction’ and is defined by the required capabilities during the different scale up waves. Motivation is often not the issue, but the identification and integration of capabilities that have to be developed or newly hired is.
A moving staircase with very irregular steps...
©️Hayley Green
