During Growth Phase Market  opens many business opportunities for Scale. The Business Plan is drafted to support this growth and budgets are arrived at – growth in revenue and profits are predicted based on the market opportunities, and generous increments are rolled out to the teams.
But why is the team which worked so hard to bring the business not working together anymore? Each manager seems to be blaming others. Within a short span, there is discontent and nitpicking happening in each and every function. Are good resources leaving organisation due to blame games. Welcome to the IPR issues related to scale.
➢ Have you assessed the available capabilities? Scaling up to meet the market opportunities is directly related to efficiency. Encouraging people to learn on the job, from other sources and incentivising the same, may be some of the steps that could be taken.
➢ Have you over-relied on acquiring talent from outside? Organisations should not bring in new talent during the growth phase and expect them to plug and play. The internal talent is more aware of the culture and business environment and they may not allow new people to settle in.
➢ Are your plans realistic? Opportunities create buoyancy and make the management arrive at ambitious targets without assessing existing strengths. Very realistic revenue and expenditure budgets, and month on month reviews to check actual against budget will help in keeping touch with reality. There should be corrections as and when required.
➢ Are your incentives aligned to the growth? Rewards and recognition has to be commensurate with performance. This should not be indiscriminate and lead to future issues.
➢ Have you done reality checks? Scale may sometimes lead to a dip in profits – effective plugging of the loopholes and systematic reviews will bring the turnaround. Panic and sacking leads to losing the wave.