If you are like many small business owners or managers, you often think about things you could do to help your company grow. But have you ever thought about things you could stop doing?
There are many things that can get in the way of business growth. Economic conditions and access to capital are some of the obvious ones. But many practices that are common in small businesses can be just as harmful to the growth of a company. By identifying and eliminating impediments to growth, you can better leverage existing capabilities for accelerated growth.
Some of the most common mistakes that stunt small business growth are:
• Being a loner: Running a business is hard. Running one without support is even harder. Surrounding yourself with mentors, advisers and alliances gives you access to a range of experiences, insights and advantages. Having someone who has been there or just someone to bounce ideas off of can help you make better decisions and save you costly mistakes.
• Doing everything yourself: It’s common for the owner of a company that’s just starting up to have to wear multiple hats. But continuing this habit can inhibit growth in several ways. Not only does it keep you from focusing on the most important tasks, but it could also be costing you more if you are doing something that you are not actually skilled at, such as marketing or bookkeeping.
• Having only one person who can do a task: When workers need to wait for one person to do something, it creates the potential for a bottleneck problem. Get rid of this problem by cross-training workers to ensure that multiple people are proficient in all areas.
• Being so focused on short-term results that new ideas are not given time to mature: New ideas are seldom overnight successes. It takes time to work out the bugs and figure out how to do new things. Budget time, resources and patience for trying new ideas instead of giving up before even trying.
• Always looking for the next big thing: Being innovative and trying new ideas is a good thing – so long as you don’t go overboard with it. If your company is constantly trying new things without taking the time to research and study how they will impact your company, you will be distracted from doing anything really well.
• Ignoring feedback: Companies receive feedback in all sorts of ways – online reviews, orders received, employee interaction and customer responses are just a few. Whether it is positive or negative, there is something valuable to be learned from feedback. Taking the time to interpret that feedback can help you recognize your strengths and weaknesses as well as industry trends.
• Becoming overwhelmed with the size of projects. When faced with a large task, it is easy to get bogged down and feel like you’re just spinning your tires. To help prevent this, break down any large project into small steps. Write each one down and tackle them one at a time.
• Taking anyone as a customer: Some customers are just not a good fit for your business. Whether it involves a difficult personality or a difference in expectations, some customers can consume time, finances and other resources that could be more profitable if applied elsewhere.
