by Lionesses of Africa Operations Dept
Following on from our recent articles, you have tightened up your structure and processes, you have a decent team around you that understands and appreciates the direction you are taking the company. You have invested time and energy in training to motivate and keep your staff. You have ‘controlled the controllables”, and you have mitigated in part your un-controllables through partnerships or closer relationships in your supply chain. You have made it through the last two years with a mixture of grit, determination, self sacrifice and (yes) a bit of luck (to reread those articles, please visit our website here). You went online and now have an ever increasing demand for your products or services, not just from your local community, or your state, but from your wider country and even beyond (who knew that someone would find your website and click ‘Buy Now’ whilst sitting in Sweden!). You wake up one morning and realize that the time is right to ‘scale up’ and ride this wave!
So let’s take a step back. To scale is not something that automatically happens to companies just because the founder woke in a good mood and decided that is what she’ll do that day - this is a conscious decision with serious demands on time, energy and cash. An increased order book is a decent start, but that is what’s termed ‘growth’. To scale involves exponential growth that can only come from serious growth in your company.
You have taken your company from a solo-preneur to a staff of 20, but each time you add a zero on the end of that employment number, it will feel like (and it is, believe us) a completely different company. Running a staff of 20 is very different from a staff of 200, which is very different from having a staff of 2,000.
You will need systems and processes in place that are watertight, along with a rock solid ‘no wriggle room’ for employees (and you as well - no shortcuts, just because you own the joint!). Staff must know that these are watertight and “No means No”! You as a founder must have processes that are stable, safe and secure. That is not to say that you cannot have flexibility, because processes and structure will change as your company increases from 20 to 200 to 2,000 employees across the globe, but each department must know the processes involved such as if they wish to go over their budget or increase the credit terms to customers. The applications that must be made, the structure and information you (or your budget or credit team) will require to sign off on an increase. To leave it to the last minute and then come running to you and say that unless we purchase that extra 40 foot container our biggest client will be let down and will leave - simply will not do. These are a big ‘No-No’ as you scale and such processes cannot be added as and when you feel like it. These should be imposed while the company is still small enough for you to be able to control the lack of knowledge, lack of understanding and lack of willingness on the part of your staff to (in their mind) play this game. Remember up until now they have had the keys to the sweet shop - they could at anytime corner you and expect to be able to persuade you on the spot to decide. If you are going to scale up properly, you simply cannot run your company in that fashion - your already impossible but current 36 hour day will just explode!
When you scale, as Ben Horowitz of a16z says in his must-read book ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things - Building a business when there are no easy answers’ here:
“When an organization grows in size, things that were previously easy become difficult. Specifically, the following things that cause no trouble when you are small become big challenges as you grow:
Communication
Common knowledge
Decision making”
Communication because you are now not able to be on the factory floor for the same amount of time, so issues will take time to filter through to you. Indeed most issues will have to be handled on the factory floor without you even involved! - Scary eh?
Common Knowledge - suddenly the staff with you at the start of your journey and who rolled up their sleeves with you to do all work, now have specializations and departments to run. New employees will be brought on board specifically because they have specializations, so again the ‘Jack of all Trades’ role will disappear. Remember this is a good thing as growth and scaling require tighter role definitions. You too will just get in the way if you role up your sleeves and dig in as a ‘Jack of all Trades’. Indeed you could often make it worse. Give the warehouse manager the responsibility to run the warehouse and you turn up, sleeves at the ready just because a 40 foot container has arrived and you want to send off some products instantly to a few customers because that is how you have always done it? What a mess! Goods won’t be counted, the order flow will be disrupted and the carefully choreographed list of customers waiting for the latest goods (who had patiently waited their turn knowing the container was on its way) will be torn up because you have unknowingly pushed the customers who complain the most to the head of the list? In one company we have worked, the Founder was banned from entering the warehouse on such days and for very good reasons too! You have to let your team and their processes work.
Decision Making - well yes, there you have it. In order to grow, you have to loosen control in this essential area. Team leaders, Department Heads, even Directors will start to appear and have greater control. As you scale you simply cannot make all the decisions - you have to give such responsibility to others.
The good news is that as Ben says, these are not controls you should just hand over on Day1 - it is very important that they are handed over as if ‘grudgingly’. By loosening control slowly this becomes a controlled handover, which is far safer than an instant change. By all means put the processes in place, create the team leaders, but continue to slowly loosen control on the decisions. How fast you go on this depends on how fast your scale up progresses.
Of course you need to remain flexible. The processes you put in place with a team of 20 but designed for 2,000 will appear cumbersome, overweight and out of place, that is why these processes must adapt as you grow. So build for 200 when at 20, build for 2,000 when at 200 or increments in between depending on the speed of your ambitions. Each step requires accountability. This is important. It is one thing for you to know that the ‘Buck stops here’ with you - but as you build these processes there must be accountability with the team that is building these with and for you.
According to the Harvard Business Review (here), when they looked at accountability amongst and within teams: “Not only does this drive greater innovation, trust, and productivity, but also it frees the boss from being the playground monitor.”
This increases the speed of decision making and of trust within organisations:
“We’ve found that you can approximate the health of a relationship, a team and an organization by measuring the average lag time between identifying and discussing problems. The shorter the lag time, the faster problems get solved and the more the resolution enhances relationships. The longer the lag, the more room there is for mistrust, dysfunction, and more tangible costs to mount. The role of leader is to shrink this gap. And the best way to do it is by developing a culture of universal accountability.”
As Ben says: “Engineer accountability into the system. Which organization and which individual is responsible for each step? What can you do to increase the visibility of their performance?”
Of course you are accountable for the entire company, but someone has to be accountable for putting in a screw straight and someone else (their team leader), must be accountable for that and the other 100 screws being put into your product daily, because otherwise sooner rather than later, no one will care…and then you as founder and owner have a far more serious problem.
Please note there is a huge difference between ‘Responsibility’ and ‘Accountability’. Responsibility is where ownership resides whereas accountability is where results have been measured and those with the responsibility are then held to account. To put it another way, when there is little or no accountability - performance, company culture, and morale suffer. To make people accountable is one of the hardest issues CEOs grapple with, which is why if you are serious about scaling up, accountability must be central to and at the forefront of your drive to scale.
Of course, scaling is not all about accountability. Accountability is what strengthens the backbone to your ever growing body. What increases the chances of your scale up succeeding is Team Work.
This is not only the team within your organisation, but the team you manage to wrap around you, such as your suppliers. Speak to them, explain your plans, encourage them to join you on this journey, explain the opportunity you see - they may be very happy to work with you, to help you grow and assist with (perhaps) better terms (who knows - if you don’t ask, you don’t get!).
This team also includes your Board - they have to be ready for the ride and support you in this. It would also be useful to have a Mentor who has been on the same journey previously. They are certainly part of the team.
Lastly the team that is your customers. Build them into a community, increase your network, jump with joy whenever someone calls and uses those magic words: “I am a Lioness, let’s do business”, this is a ready made network of over 1.3 million African Female Entrepreneurs willing you on and as we constantly see in various Whatsapp groups - eager to trade with each other.
So, to scale is not a fearful thing, you are already halfway there - you have an incredible global community given our ever growing African and Diaspora Network (Shout Out! to our American membership, now well over 100,000 strong). Use it.
We shall leave the last words to our Founder and CEO from one of her GML Blogs (here):
“If I look at the women entrepreneurs in the Lionesses community who have built really successful businesses, they have all taken a long-term approach to their growth strategies. They have started by putting solid foundations in place, built up and trained great teams, established good networks and relationships with customers. They have taken the time to get things right, to build their business reputations and trust with customers. Importantly, they have spent time on developing and refining product offerings. When I ask any of these successful women entrepreneurs to share their advice on what it takes to build a great business, their responses are always the same - it takes time! You have to be passionate about what you do; stay focused on your vision; persevere through the tough times; spend time developing solid relationships on a business and personal level; and above all, deliver on your brand promise to your customers.”
Amen to that!
Stay safe.