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Recipe to Business Success

There is a recipe for achieving business success, which you need to know.

The entrepreneur is a key ingredient, but your role needs to be mixed and complemented with other ingredients to achieve the right results.

Research undertaken by Cranfield School of Management gives us an insight into creating the right recipe for success....

Adding new ingredients

As your business grows you will need to recruit more people with the right skills to grow your business. These recruits should complement your skill gaps or match your skills, to take over certain parts of your role, if you need to delegate.

Adopting a different mix

Working with a larger team will require the entrepreneur to adopt different leadership skills to those they launched with.

The Role of the Key Ingredient

Cranfield School of Management has been studying the behaviour of entrepreneurs and their relationship with key members of staff in thousands of growing companies in the UK. One conclusion the study has reached is that entrepreneurs are themselves the most likely to be the biggest barrier to the growth and development of their own company if they don't adapt.

They have categorised entrepreneurs into four categories; heroes, meddlers, artisans and strategists.

Heroes try to manage every aspect of the business and want to be seen as the expert or the person that knows everything. They fail to recruit qualified staff and do little to develop the team.
Artisans continue to be the main producer or service provider in the business. They fail to take on management roles as they focus on delivery.
The meddler, by contrast, takes on a management role and will recruit or train team members but then fails to let go and finds it hard to delegate.
Finally, the strategist, which according to the Cranfield Study is the most desirable type of entrepreneur to develop a growing business. A strategist develops the management skills of their team so they can step back and think strategically.

Taking on a New Role in the Recipe

To achieve success, as a leader and a manager, the entrepreneur will need to behave differently and spend more time thinking about the future than the here and now, that is strive to be a strategist. This is a transition some small business leaders find difficult to make and as a result they become the barrier to their own company’s growth.

Refining the Recipe - Developing a strategy for growth

It follows that part of the role of a leader is to develop a strategy for growth. It is unlikely you will grow by doing what you have always done so as a starting point you should ask yourself three basic questions:

How can you sell more to existing customers?
What additional products or services can you offer existing customers?
Which additional customers may be interested in your products or services?

Having asked the questions you can then develop strategies that will make a difference. Future growth cannot be guaranteed but by seeking to develop yourself as a leader and finding the time to step back from the business to create strategies for future growth your chances for success are significantly improved.

Find out more about our Business Growth programme or Leadership Coaching

Back to Growth Strategy

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