Scaling up your SME: building a Team that really Works
Kate’s actionable insights were truly invaluable to us. We’re an agency of 15 going through a period of growth-related transition. We spent two days mapping out a new team structure, lines of reporting, designating roles and accountabilities for every role, and defining our values, as well as thinking holistically about the business. Perhaps a testament to the great work that Kate does is the fact that we had a check-in three months on to discuss how things had gone and it was very clear that because of a number of implementations that came out of the session, our agency had never been more efficient and organised. Beyond her organisational/business understanding and advice, Kate is a joy to work with and was extremely personable throughout.
Andrew Skinner-Shah, Co-Founder and COO at Nara Communications
In the middle, between ‘start-up’ and ‘corporation’ there is another type of business – the ‘scale-up’ organisations – and they are flourishing.
In the UK, these ‘small to medium-sized’ enterprises form more than 99% of all businesses and employ over 12 million people. If your business is an SME it will typically be turning over anything from £2m to £50m and employ from 10 to 250 people.
Even some larger companies – some globally known names – have many SME characteristics because of their values and the way they are divided into smaller units.
A different style of leadership
An SME doesn’t need the full raft of corporate structures to work well, but as it grows, will need to be guided in a different way from the informal ‘family’ structures and methods you could use when it was smaller. One of the key issues is accountability. Do you ever find yourself thinking:
- “Why does everything end up on my desk?”
- “Nobody shows any initiative – it’s like managing a bunch of children.”
- “Why can’t I get people to do what I want them to do?”
- “I do everything I can to look after them, yet they still complain about me behind my back.”
These are all signs that your informal leadership style and structures are running out of road. Remember, scale-ups need to be structured more than start-ups, but this doesn’t mean ‘corporate’ systems. In fact, people moving to SMEs from corporates very often fail precisely because they try to over-engineer the organisation. Click here for a chart that will help you decide where you are on the journey and what the priorities are to grow your business now.
This is where Leaders Lab can help you with our unique TeamWorks process. In just a few sessions with you and your team, Kate will guide you in exploring:
- exactly what is happening
- where you are on the growth path
- what each individual role should cover and how it will be measured
- behaviour in your organisation and how you can all consistently express your company values
- the minimal structures, processes and skills to put in to help with the issues you face.
The outcome is an organisation where everyone is working towards the same goals, knows exactly what is expected of them and is committed to a practical process for keeping it all in place – because all of you have been involved in designing it at every stage.
Our Director Team has worked with Kate at Leaders Lab to help clarify and align our vision for the business. With her facilitation we have created a core of middle management, and then developed the roles and responsibilities for all members of the team. We have developed a set of agreements around who is accountable and how work is delegated, and a set of behaviours and values which form the basis of the Company’s culture. We now have a cohesive team all working towards achieving our business objectives, with clearly defined accountabilities against which to assess performance.
Andrew Sainsbury, Managing Director, TasteConnection