A common feature of many businesses is that they are experiencing a burst of rapid growth.
They have a proven product or service, they have excellent customer satisfaction and are reaping the rewards of their efforts.
However businesses going through this phase also experience what is known as “Growing Pains”.Growing pains can develop in any area of the business it could be that the product or service quality is beginning to suffer, or it could be that the IT accounting or communications systems are not keeping up with the required pace.
Another reason behind “Growing pains” phase is the difficulty businesses have in
attracting and retaining quality staff to be able continue to provide the level of customer service that has contributed to the current success of the business.
A further area that seems to be a common source of growing pains relates to the management of staff. When the business have a small team of 5 or so, it’s generally possible for the business owner to manage all aspects of the business – marketing and sales, customer service, product quality, finance and admin and of course overseeing the day-to-day activities of staff.
Once the business starts to grow however, and all of a sudden there are 15, 20, maybe even 30 staff, it becomes an increasingly difficult task for any business owner to oversee all activities with quite the same vigour.
In terms of managing staff, the team will also tend to become more diverse as it increases in number – people come in with different skills, interests and a different way of doing things.
Underlying conflict or tension between staff can become more of an issue, and becomes difficult to know your staff as well as you know the original few members of your team.
One of the possible answers to this sort of dilemma could be to implement a supervisory layer within the business structure, so that the supervisors take on the day-to-day management of staff and allow the business owner to focus on business development and more strategic issues.
On the face of it, this seems an easy thing to achieve – the supervisor will be betterplaced to get to know staff, resolve issues and utilise their skills and time in the best possible way, whilst the business owner can attend other things that will really make a difference to the business.
