How CEOs Can Scale a Company for Growth

Today we are going to talk about how to scale a company for growth. There are three main considerations for the CEO in thinking about how to scale a company. They are people, processes, and systems. I’ll tell you right off the bat that most CEOs I talk to don’t even like to talk about most of these things, because they don’t sound very interesting. They sound like bureaucracy. They sound like things that we are not doing as a smaller company. Why do we need to do these things to grow, to be a larger company? This is what we are going to talk about today.

Hiring the Right People to Scale Your Company

The single most important thing a CEO can do to scale a company is to hire the right people, to think about what is the organizational design and where do they put people, and what kind of people they need in each part of the organization. Now, importantly, this is dependent upon the maturity of the company as you are growing. If you’re in a startup situation, you are going to bring in people who are good in a startup situation. You’re going to bring on people who understand how to build a startup into something larger.

If you are in a medium-size organization, you may discover that if the people that are currently working in the company joined when the company was smaller, they may not be the right people for a medium-sized organization.

One of the key questions to ask yourself as a CEO when you’re hiring your leadership team is “based on my current growth. Who am I hiring for right now? Am I hiring for a person who can bring us to the next level of growth or am I hiring for a person who can help us in the current stage of growth?” Different skillsets for different stages of growth, different speeds of growth, different sizes of companies. It is a very, very important factor in scaling a company.

Create Processes that Will Help Grow the Company Beyond Its Current Level

The next consideration is processes. This is a word CEOs hate. I understand. I hated it when I was a CEO as well. Who wants to spend time putting in processes when we are trying to create a great company? Don’t processes get in the way? Well, they can, and sometimes they do, but ultimately you are trying to enable scale to happen inside your company. There has to be a way for people to understand what to do when they don’t report to you directly anymore. There has to be a way for standard operating procedures to exist in a way that people can step into a role and get the work done without having to go through a great deal of training.

Utilizing Best Practices

Another key factor about processes is that these are essentially best practices. If you are the CEO, if you and the company are developing best practices on how to interact with customers – On how to build products, on how to manage the culture, etc. These processes enable you to gain scale. It’s a way of enabling people to learn what are the best practices that have gotten the company to where it is today. One very important type of process falls under the area of values.

Utilizing Company Values 

A very effective way to scale a company is through values and by values. I mean, the words we use to describe how we think about the world. So from a process standpoint, the role of the CEO is to ensure that the leadership team understands the values, speaks to the values, and teaches the values to everybody else in the company. So imagine you’re in a company that had three levels, and now it has five levels because it is growing. The question is, how does a new employee or someone coming in who’s an individual contributor implement things the way the CEO wants them to? One way is though values and the second is processes. They can implement best practices quickly by understanding how the company thinks, and what those best practices are without the CEO or even the leadership team having to be involved in every little detail. This enables scale.

Invest In Systems that Will Increase Efficiency 

The last consideration is systems. As the company grows, people are going to need to share a lot more information. The company’s going to have a lot more data. It’s going to be collecting data and need to implement things using this data. There will be systems available to the company that it’s important to consider bringing in. There’s always a build or buy decision. Let’s just say, you’re going to buy Instead of build for the sake of argument. The question the CEO should pose is what are the systems we can purchase that will enable us to implement the processes we’ve put in place to be done more effectively, more efficiently. Let’s look for ways to automate some of the work that can be done, or that is being done now, to help people be more effective and more efficient. Let’s invest in the organization in addition to people and processes with systems to help us all scale even faster.

Contact CEO Coach Glenn Gow Today!

My name is Glenn Gow, CEO Coach. I love coaching CEOs and want to help make you an even better CEO. Let’s decide if we are a fit for each other. Schedule a time to talk with me at calendly.com/glenngow. I look forward to speaking with you soon.

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SUCCESS STORIES

Janice Raises Over $100M for Her Company

Janice Raises Over $100M for Her Company

As one of the founders, Janice had created the perfect solution in an exploding market. As her CEO Coach, we worked very hard to create a scalable business model that significantly accelerated revenue growth. This model included geographic expansion, the addition of new product offerings, and stickiness to create repeat business.

This triple revenue-acceleration model not only worked but it attracted the interest of growth investors.

But a growth model wasn't enough. We needed to help Janice become a better CEO. Specifically, we worked on how to manage her board, so their faith in her as the CEO grew as time went on.

For some CEOs, the board can be intimidating. At first, it was for Janice as well. We worked on how to manage the board and get the most out of the board. Ultimately, we turned the board into a strong set of advisors and advocates for Janice as the CEO.

The support and confidence of the existing board was a critical factor in enabling her to raise well over $100M in the next round, increasing the valuation by more than $600M.

Darren Raises His First $3 Million

Darren Raises His First $3 Million

My CEO client (Darren) was starting a company in a new category. He was focused on raising capital for his business and wanted help crafting his story. Darren is a brilliant CEO, yet he realized he could produce a better story with help from someone who has created successful fundraising stories many times.

When we started working together, his story was overly complex, difficult for investors to understand, and not as strong as it could have been. Together we built a story about the tremendous value the company was creating. We used historical precedent to bolster the vision and mission. We gave investors confidence in the founders. We proved that the company could scale.

Investors are pattern-matchers. They look for the patterns that tell them this opportunity is like other opportunities they’ve seen, giving them a strong belief in the potential ROI. Together, Darren and I constructed a winning story that helped key investors see the patterns of success.

According to Darren, “Glenn gave me the perspective and confidence I needed to succeed.” Darren raised $3 million for his startup company in his first round. Darren has continued to successfully raise money in later rounds as well.

Meilin Creates A Scaling Organization

Meilin Creates A Scaling Organization

Meilin was always asking, "How can I help my company grow faster?" She was successful by most measures but had higher growth ambitions.

As her CEO Coach, I helped focus her efforts and energies on an often-overlooked area for many CEOs. This area enables scaling and enables the CEO to manage their team more effectively -- values.

Most CEOs have corporate values but don't use them as the ultimate way to install a belief system - a way for every employee to focus on the most critical issues for the company.

Meilin and I worked on making the values core to the thinking and speaking of the management team. Once the management team adopted these values and started speaking about them in their regular communications, we knew that we were on our way to ensuring that every employee “lived” the values.

While values are not the only thing a company needs to grow fast, they are critical to its success. Meilin's company is now growing over 100%.

Sean Gets It All Done

Sean Gets It All Done

As CEO, Sean had no work-life balance, and he was struggling with the overwhelming responsibilities of being a CEO. One of the biggest challenges of any CEO is to get everything done. The list of critical items seems to grow every day.

As his CEO coach (and as a former CEO), I recognized the stress he was under. That level of stress is no fun. To help Sean become a better CEO, I focused him on delegation, talent development, and balance.

First, we focused on developing Sean's delegation skills. Delegation is the "8th wonder of the world." When you make it work, your workload diminishes, and the company performs at a higher level. As Sean became better at delegating, he also began to see strengths and weaknesses in his leadership team from a different perspective.

The next step was to refresh his leadership team. We created a plan to either develop the ones that could step it up and perform better or find new leadership team members for those that couldn't help the company grow.

Finally, we worked on creating a way of living for Sean that provided him some balance. I tell my CEOs to "put their oxygen mask on first." If a CEO wants to perform at the highest level, they need to take care of themselves first.

Now that Sean has a much better leadership team, he has become a master delegator. By delegating many of the activities he had taken on before, he now has much more time to take care of himself.

Sean's company has now entered a new growth phase. More importantly, he is enjoying his work a lot more and his life a lot more.

Viraj Fires His “Best” Employee

Viraj Fires His “Best” Employee

As a CEO, Viraj was focused on employee retention. He recognized the value of keeping high-performing employees and the high cost of turnover.

One of Viraj's direct reports was one of his "best" employees. This person consistently out-performed against their targets. Within their function, they were a rock star.

However, this same person was toxic to the rest of the organization. They constantly argued with others, and they made most others feel bad about themselves. Viraj found he was spending a great deal of time managing around the toxicity created by this employee.

Viraj valued this person's contributions within their function, and he also really hated the idea of employee turnover. As a result, Viraj put up with this person and continued to work around the toxicity issue.

As Viraj's CEO Coach, I helped him understand that team alignment and team cohesion are critical factors to help the company grow. We agreed that preventing employee turnover is a good goal, but not at the expense of creating a well-functioning team.

Viraj wanted to become a better CEO, and he knew what he had to do. While it was difficult, he decided to fire the person he once thought was his "best" employee.

The first thing he heard from the rest of his direct reports was, "What took you so long?"

Olivia Finds Product-Market Fit

Olivia Finds Product-Market Fit

Olivia, my CEO client, is a product genius. She is highly creative, an excellent problem-solver, and knows how to get products out the door on time.

Olivia raised a great deal of money based on her product ideas and some early successes. The challenge was that her company wasn't growing fast enough. The pressure from the investors was building, and she was worried.

Raising a lot of money early is a blessing and a curse. The curse is that Olivia delivered her product too quickly. She delivered it, making too many assumptions about the market she was serving. When the product was released, it was a good fit but not a great fit.

Olivia was concerned about the time and dollars it would take to conduct research and test product-market fit in multiple market segments. We created a partnering strategy that enabled us to test multiple new market segments in a short time.

Olivia has found multiple market segments that are a fit for the product. Now that she has achieved product-market fit, the strategy is to "go big" on the go-to-market. And her company is taking off.

Wilson Turns the Board Around

Wilson Turns the Board Around

Wilson was a first-time CEO. The company was doing well, but not quite as well as the board had hoped. Wilson found himself uncomfortable as a minority shareholder working with a board that could fire him if he didn't perform.

Wilson wanted to know how to manage a Board of Directors. The first step was to acknowledge that a board has different measures of success than the CEO. That means there will naturally be tension. The second step was to dig in to deeply understand what the key drivers are for each board member.

Based on this information, Wilson can now address his needs, the company's needs, and the board's needs. That was the first breakthrough.

Once he knew how to address the needs of the board, we turned to address his needs. As Wilson's CEO Coach, I helped him realize that the board is an incredible asset to leverage.

Wilson began to build relationships with the board members individually to understand better how they could be of service to him and the company.

When Wilson works with the board, he is fully aware of their needs and addresses them appropriately. More importantly, he now tells the board what he is doing and relies on their insight and experience for feedback on how to help the company perform at a higher level.

Wilson is no longer concerned about the board and now gets more out of them than ever before.

Darius Solved His Crisis

Darius Solved His Crisis

I got the call at 10 PM on a Thursday. Darius, a CEO client, reached out to me just as I was about to end the day. "Glenn, my Chief Revenue Officer, just resigned, and I'm not sure what to do."

Darius was running a rapidly-growing business that was highly dependent on a well-run sales organization. He had delegated sales responsibility to his Chief Revenue Officer so Darius could focus on engineering and product.

The good news is that Darius didn't relinquish oversight or reporting of sales, just sales execution. It's also true that Darius wasn't in a panic, and we had worked on a plan for the departure of each of his direct reports.

At the moment, though, Darius and I needed to review that plan to ensure it was our best option. We checked whether or not the interim head of sales could genuinely step into the role. We discussed which accounts Darius should immediately nurture relationships with. We agreed that the recruiter we would need was still the right recruiter.

We quickly put together a communication plan on how to bring this news to the leadership team and the rest of the company. We worked on the exact next steps to interact with the interim head of sales, the director of sales operations, and HR.

Darius felt he didn't know what to do, but in actuality, he did. We had prepared for this, and he just needed to talk it through in the heat of the moment so he could execute against the plan immediately.

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