As your company grows, you will have to delegate many of your responsibilities to the people you work with. You may have been able to manage everything yourself at the beginning, but hanging onto the reins when you’re growing at 60% a year is a recipe for disaster. You’ll either severely restrict your company’s growth, or cause its demise. You have to delegate. And as you do, your business will start to take on a life of its own. Its business activities will multiply and your team will take it in new directions. In a company’s lifecycle, this is usually when organizational bloat creeps in. Pay attention to the ways that your company grows, and whether this adds or subtracts value. One of your new responsibilities is to ensure that your company’s activities add value.
Value can be added directly or indirectly. Activities like introducing new revenue streams, or upselling existing customers add value directly. Indirect value builds organizational value without contributed to the bottom line directly. This is where you usually get the biggest long-term payoff. Take customer service, for example. Improving customer service is a classic way to increase the lifetime value of a customer and to build a strong brand.
