Are you growth ready?

Times are not great, and growth is challenging. I hear that a lot as business focus on costs. Are you getting growth ready? Do you have a transformation plan? As we know its cyclical.

I suspect most organisations are currently planning for growth one to two years out. The cycle will come round as it does, and we will have growth opportunities. Often delivering that growth plan becomes challenging. Costs have been taken out and investment stifled.

A sudden burst of positive business can leave organisations foundering and delivering low quality outcomes to customers or not able to win new business. The trick is to prepare for the coming upturn in the cycle. It generally takes a year to plan and set up implementation for a transformation, and we should be clear that supporting the j-curve of growth in your plans will require transformation. It will require more capacity in people, processes and products. Those you have recently reduced to save costs. Even if it is ‘switching back on’ they still need thinking about and planning.

Therefore, if your latest 3-year plan has growth in years 2 and 3 then you need to be planning for that now. You shouldn’t just do things the way you were, but you should take the opportunity to rebuild them in a more efficient and modern way. You may want to automate some areas. You may want to replace some processes. You may want to revitalise the investment programme.

Planned growth is often not in exactly what you were doing before. It will require some different things done in different ways.

You should be planning now. That means you need to be defining what needs to be done, when and by whom. You need to understand the level of investment required in people, technology processes and capacity. Then you need to be defining the lead times and the triggers. If you don’t invest ahead of the growth curve in this then you will fall behind. The companies that succeed when the good times return are those who already know exactly what they will do when as the positive trigger points arrive. Those that fail try to react in the moment as their resources and capacity are stretched.

You won’t be doing this now as your planning resources have all been removed or diverted to delivering the cost cause. It’s a small investment now to get independent advisors and consultants to come work that plan with you. This should be done discreetly so as not to divert the organisation from delivering todays numbers. Even if it then sits on the shelf for 18 months before that first trigger point – you will be ready to win.

Want to engage more then reach out to Oyster Advisor who can help deliver a transformation plan to support your growth aspirations.