What makes a company butt up again and again against a financial ceiling and, no matter what they try, they’re unable to break through?
When a business owner decides to implement a growth strategy, new financial targets are required. In this situation its common for a range of sabotaging triggers to present themselves, which have the potential to prevent the achievement of the planned growth strategy.
The business may hit the new targets momentarily but will not be able to consistently achieve the new goals until the sabotaging triggers have been identified and addressed.
When business owners find themselves in a holding pattern around their existing financial limitations these three initial questions can help to find a way to break through.
- Why is my business not moving forward financially?
- What is getting in the way?
- Is my strategy for growth achievable?
As businesses grow, obstacles get in the way. These obstacles generally arise from outside the business yet impact on the internal operations. The resulting dynamics can play a pivotal role in how the business inches forward.
More mature businesses, those operating for seven to ten years, will usually have a raft of experience pushing up against financial limitations. This experience will set them apart from a younger business of say three to five years of age.
The experienced older businesses often understand the nature of the limiting influences and the impact these influences can have on their business’s financial outcomes and future.
Knowing the right questions to ask when experiencing an inability to consistently achieve new growth targets will enable business owners to begin to find their way through the obstacles that are preventing the business’s growth.
The obstacles can at times be very simple but they still they can play havoc with the internal operations of the business. Here are some common and seemingly simple issues that can derail a business owners’ newly implemented growth strategy:
- The plan to take the business forward is not clear / specific enough;
- The team doesn’t understand how to integrate the changes required for growth and therefore progress is slowed or halted;
- The existing business structure, and/or systems, cannot accommodate the increased work or increased financial demands required to achieve the new targets.
Pulling a business through these limitations can be a fight and not all businesses make it through the transition happily.
To position yourself to move forward with strength, remember to:
- Analyse the financials – is the business financially prepared to invest in the necessary structural and systematic changes required?
- Review the actual financial data against the forecasted figures – (sometimes the forecasting is unrealistic).
Investigating and discovering what is halting the planned transition is key to the business breaking through.
There is always a story being written in the business’s operational data that will provide an explanation as to why a business is unable to move through to achieve new financial targets.
The challenge for all business owners is to search the data and discover what their unique business’s story tells them about the business’s inability to transition to a greater level of turnover.
To discover the issues:
- Get feedback from the team.;
- Analyse the information;
- Make new decisions.;
- Refine the strategy.
Extensive analysis is the way to the solution. It promotes a healthy perspective into the business. The process provides the business owner with a deeper view into the internal running of the business and gives the owner the opportunity to enjoy the richness that comes with growth.
The signpost signalling the business is in a holding pattern can be the friend of a business. Use it as a time to dig a little deeper into the goings on of the organisation. The solutions will be there, particularly when you ask the right questions.
Have fun exploring!
Sharon
