Scaling Small to Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs) - Part 3: Ways of Working
In Part 2: Growth vs Scaling, I defined the difference between growth and scaling, and highlighted the importance of Ways of Working to allow companies to grow and scale.
Ways of Working
Effective and efficient Ways of Working require three elements to be addressed: Processes, People and Systems. Otherwise:
Having a great team without the right processes and systems to support them in their role is going to hold them back
Implementing a tool thinking it's going to solve all your problems, and it doesn't
Adopting Agile practices without a true understanding of the fundamentals means that you miss the real opportunities to benefit from it
People
Why
People are your most valuable asset, so it's important that they are enabled to be able to perform their role effectively, which includes having the right skills and capabilities (as well the right processes and systems to support their activities)
What
Ensuring that you have the right organisation structure, the right teams with the people that have the right skills and capabilities, in the right roles
Through coaching teams and individuals, building internal capabilities, knowledge and skills to perform their roles
Examples
Product Owner/Manager Coaching
Project Management Coaching
Agile Coaching
Processes
Why
Processes are necessary to be able to grow and scale your organisation, so the team's energy can be focused on innovating rather than the inefficiencies of no or poor processes
What
Developing processes that leverage best-practices and are fit-for-purpose to support the goals of your organisation
Examples
Similar to Innovation Framework, but also supports operational activities, such as customer acquisition, customer success and continuous improvement
Systems
Why
Many system implementations fail to reach expectations due to the poor choice of tools, not implementing and configuring them correctly, and not supporting their ongoing use.
What
Selecting and implementing the best-of-breed tools to support the business processes effectively and the teams to efficiently execute those processes
Reviewing existing systems, implementing new/replacing tools and cleanup/reconfiguration of existing tools and configurations
Examples
Idea Tracker
Atlassian Platform including Jira, Confluence, Jira Service Desk/Management and addon's
Document and Knowledge Management
If you would like to have a chat about your company, where it is in its journey, and the challenges faced, feel free to reach out.
Cheers
David