When you are setting up your company, there is often the attitude that you just set up and don’t worry about putting in place the structure and management practices until you really need them.
In my experience if you just plough straight in and delay putting in place best practices until you are in a real growth phase, the firefighting aspects of the growing pains is likely to affect your decision making, resulting in a compromised solution. In this cycle you have to reinvent processes and the business over and over again, which becomes increasingly costly.
I think one of the best pieces of advice is to begin with the end in mind. Start from the perspective of seeing what you will need, as a successful organization and then work backwards from it.
An example is Human Resource – if you are planning to have employees, what practices will you need to have in place to run an effective operation with engaged employees, who are loyal and committed to the business?
The discipline of researching best practice and working out how best to implement it for your business will facilitate growth, not act as a barrier to it.
