Making the decision to start a new business and then actually taking the plunge requires bravery. For many people, it’s the realisation of many years of dreaming and planning.
Decisions in the early days are often made intuitively, but when hard work and dedication are rewarded by growth, you need to start thinking about scaling your business. From the point of launch, the ways in which a company manages its systems, structures, and decision-making process are just as, if not more, important than any customer-facing activity. Failure to deliver on the former rarely enables a company to achieve its potential. It can disrupt or even ruin key elements of the business and culture, as well as create challenges and bottlenecks down the line.
In this article, we explore practical strategies to encourage a startup culture of experimentation and continuous development to drive future business growth.
How to support future startup growth
1. Optimise systems and processes
As a five- or 10-person company, many of your internal processes are just the way things have always been done; there’s been no planning or rigour.
As you grow your startup, this just can’t continue. You’ll need more sophisticated IT infrastructure and software, more detailed accounting, and generally more robust ways of making decisions. More importantly, everything will need to be adequately tracked and integrated for the sake of convenience and efficiency.
Making things lean and encouraging growth is an ongoing process. Only a poor business culture discourages experimentation for the sake of continuity.
2. Have the right people in the right roles
A significant change any startup has to undergo during its growth journey is the process of moving from a founder-led business, where one or two individuals oversee almost all aspects of the company, to one that employs specialists. Bringing in departmental expertise enables the founders to step back from day-to-day operations and focus on delivering a strategy.
Consider the management structure that has served you so far – can it support your current and future business growth? Is this the time to create separate departments or teams covering finance, human resources, legal, marketing, or other elements?
The founders and leadership are the ones with the vision, but it’s not sustainable for all the decision-making to sit with them. Not only can specialists free up time for you to spend elsewhere, but they can also tackle their own areas with greater expertise than you may have to offer. It can also create a poor culture if you hire competent staff but refuse to give them the authority they need, making it harder to retain talent.
3. Invest in training
As your company grows, it’s important to help staff stay on top of their game. Paying for professional development across your team will help employees keep their practices contemporary. This will, in turn, help you take advantage of the latest insight and technology within your industry.
This also relates to keeping talent. If people feel their employer is investing in their future and wellbeing, they’ll be less likely to look to move to another role. While training may have immediate costs, recruiting replacement specialists is far more expensive and time-consuming for a growing business.
4. Don’t lose sight of company culture
Many people choose to work for a smaller business because they like the culture and sense of belonging, which can be more often found in SMEs than in large multinational companies. For example, smaller office space-based cultures often give staff more opportunities for bespoke personal growth, as well as more one-on-one time with managers and strategic leadership.
As a business grows, it can be hard to avoid inadvertently creating a more corporate or industrial atmosphere. Staying true to the cultural values at the heart of your business – no matter how large it grows – can go a long way in sustaining the enthusiasm and well-being of staff.
Make sure you conduct regular employee surveys to understand what resonates with the team and what hasn’t worked. Formalising the best parts of your work culture can save you scrambling to revive it later on, helping you continue maintaining the environment that has supported your growth thus far.
5. Empower the team
As a company grows, the founders can’t make every new challenge their priority. Giving team members the freedom to tackle problems helps prevent disruptions and create solutions more quickly. Naturally, freedom to experiment doesn’t mean freedom from oversight, but giving staff this level of trust can create a far more effective office or warehouse culture.
If you have a solid hiring strategy working, you’ll have the right people in-role to deliver this kind of performance. Find candidates capable of creating solutions and give them the freedom to do so – it will prove essential to long-term growth.
6. Plan how to cope with growth
When it comes to expansion, it’s important to plan as well as react. Have you incorporated projected growth into your long-term plan? If so, have you considered:
- How will you reinvest growth-related profit?
- Do you have enough staff to meet demand from growth?
- Will you be diversifying your services?
- Do any processes need to evolve to deal with an expanding customer base?
- Can your property accommodate your future business growth?
It sounds obvious, but if you fail to plan for next year, not just next week, you’ll come unstuck pretty quickly. Plan to accommodate growth in the right way, and you’ll utilise it to a far greater degree than a startup that fails to prepare for success.
7. Learn to make mistakes, and move on
As a small business, you’ll be used to things not going quite to plan, and this is exactly the same when you’re in scale-up mode. What might look like a flawless plan on paper sometimes doesn’t translate into the profit centre you’d anticipated.
Don’t dwell on it; take on board the learnings, move on, and try the next thing. You’re one step closer to the knockout idea. As we mentioned, it’s important to create a culture of experimentation, and a big part of this is learning from failure.
8. Consider your future requirements
As your company grows, it is important to think about your changing property requirements well in advance. Indeed, having the right core working space will be key to enjoying the benefits of coworking spaces, whether at a startup or otherwise.
Consider elements like:
- Will you be growing your headcount?
- Do you need more storage space?
- Will you require more machinery?
- Do staff and customers have enough access to parking?
- Is your business in an accessible location?
- Does your rental property have all the features you require?
Depending on how rapidly you are expanding, you may want to consider shorter leases (for example, three years). You may also want to meet with your property manager to discuss a potential move, as they should be able to highlight opportunities in their own property portfolio.
Mileway is here to help
With almost 700 commercial properties across the UK, and more than 1,800 across Europe, Mileway helps businesses find the space they need at every stage of growth.
Simply contact Mileway and one of our local experts will be happy to help you find the perfect property for continued growth.
FAQs
How do you improve company culture?
There are several ways to improve your company culture, including:
- Choose the right commercial property that fits your needs in terms of staff access, space, and amenities
- Ensure staff have the authority to experiment and make decisions
- Encourage a learning culture rather than focusing on mistakes
- Plan on how to accommodate future growth
- Invest in staff training and development to prevent them from looking elsewhere
- Ask for and take on staff feedback
- Share information about company goals, explaining to staff how they contribute to and benefit from meeting targets
- Define the core values of your business and what they mean for staff
- Celebrate achievements for individuals and as a company
- Encourage socialisation, such as with staff parties or team events