Answer: Companies struggle with forecasting problems before they surface, leaving your employees reacting to problems instead of being proactive. CEOs thrive on problem solving and love the thrill of landing new accounts. Your employees struggle to see the value in growth and continually wish for things to slow down. Help them understand the challenges for where the company is in its stage of growth. Help them understand that the issues facing them today are typical and even more important, once those issues are identified, they can be fixed.

Answer: There are everyday problems your employees have to deal with. They don’t live in your world. Your world is full of confidence and vision about what the company can achieve. Your employees have to constantly balance deadlines with getting information or parts on time. They constantly have to decide which crisis to chase today. They have to learn how to work with people of different personalities and different perspectives. How can they think about the bigger picture when they can’t manage the myriad of challenges that face them every day? You need to help them find ways to uncover those issues, recognize the root cause and work as a team to solve them. Only then can your employees get excited about the future of the company.

Answer: There are three gates of focus that capture every issue a company will experience: The Profit/Revenue Gate, the People Gate and the Process Gate. All three gates are critical and certainly a company has to have profit to grow. However, depending upon where you are in your growth curve, focusing on profits can actually harm your organization. When you are at a stage of growth that demands the CEO start letting go in order to let the company grow, not focusing on the People Gate will add to your headaches. Being aware of when to focus on these gates of focus is the first step in getting the traction you need to grow intentionally.

Answer: There are critical transition zones a company moves through as it grows. Understanding these zones prepare you for the next stage of growth. These transition zones tell you 1) when the activity level in your company is causing burn-out and frustration among your employees (Flood Zone) and 2) when the methodologies you have today are no longer effective and you have to add new ones (Wind Tunnel). By understanding a Flood Zone and a Wind Tunnel, you are putting words to those challenges and taking the mystery out of growing a company.

Answer: As a company grows and moves through different stages of growth, one of the rules states, “what you don’t get done in any stage of growth doesn’t go away.” Without the benefit of understanding what is required of you at each stage of growth, you are destined to relive the challenges you didn’t address when you were smaller. Growth can hide many issues. When things are going well, customers are knocking on your door, employees are engaged, it’s easy to ignore the challenges that are lying just under the surface. Challenges such as 1) hiring quality people, 2) unclear values throughout the organization, 3) too slow getting products/services to market. Tuning into the challenges specific to your stage of growth provides you the traction you need to focus on the right things at the right time.