Scale Lesson: Surviving on Talent
Many businesses today are able to survive on talent and talent alone, but all they can ever do is just survive.
These are the ones that do a good job, have a reasonably good reputation in their particular marketplace, can get by in a variety of disciplines, and are generally a good company to use (from a customer’s perspective) but they never get bigger than ‘average’.
They exist on fumes from their cash flow, they run around like crazy tending to customer whims, and they spend a lot of time wrestling with their bottom line.
The reality is that these businesses cannot grow because they do not have the processes and disciplines in place to create a scalable business model.
They have not set up their goals and targets; there is no unity of vision; they do not have measurements in place or a way of improvement by learning lessons; and their exit plan is simply, ‘more of the same’.
To grow a business successfully you need to let the system deliver the excellent result – not the people.