Rutherford Cross’ Laura Montgomery discusses the importance of building the right team in the next in our Business Scalability blog series.
In the first blog in our scalability series, we looked at what it means to scale a business effectively, versus growth in general. We looked at the importance of starting from a place of strength, the willingness and ability to take risks and secure investment for your business, and the importance of securing the right team to see it through.
In this second blog, we focus in on the importance of hiring the right leadership team in order to execute your scalability strategy.
Often, it is a lack of an appropriate skills mix at a senior level that can lead a business with an impressive offering to fail in the early stages of the scaling process. Scaling a business is intensive, complex, and pressurised, and you need to have the people in place with the appropriate skills for each stage in the process.
Early on in the process, it is important to assess the current skills of your top team against what is required to deliver your new strategy, and then hire appropriately to fill any gaps. Remember you are hiring for the journey, not just today. It is also essential to ensure diversity in background, skills, and approach in order to be successful.
However this is not a one off approach. This assessment of skills fit of your current team against what is required at each stage in the scalability process is an ongoing one. When a business is evolving quickly, the people in the role today may not be right for role tomorrow.
This process is a challenging one for any leader, but it is important that it is carried out in a systematic and strategic way. Avoid hiring quickly or based on emotion as the wrong hire in a small business can have catastrophic impact. Look for support where it is available to you e.g. from mentors or peer networks, and from recruitment professionals to ensure due diligence is carried out for every hire.
So to summarise, in order to scale successfully you should:
- Ensure your strategy is right
- Develop your team
- Tackle complexity
- Continually asses current skills mix against skills needed
- React to fill skills gaps
If you take time to follow this process, and seek out support where it is available to you, you will be well on your way to scaling your business successfully.
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