The business injury that comes from doing everything right
Business at a Crossroads Series - Part 4 of 5. If you haven’t taken the Crossroads Diagnostic, you can do that here.
Last spring, I decided to run the Rock 'n' Roll half marathon. My daughter and I were going to do it together, and it felt like the perfect way to get back into running after being off and on with it for years.
As is my tendency, I went too hard too fast. I was training in old orthotics (any other overpronators out there?) that used to work fine and building mileage faster than my body was ready for. I had a plan. In fact, I was following it to a T, but I wasn’t adapting the plan to what my body was actually capable of.
When my heels started hurting, I just chalked it up to just getting back to it and maybe doing a little too much, but I pressed on. I had a plan to follow and a goal to achieve… until my heel pain became unbearable and it was clear I had a nasty case of plantar fasciitis. That diagnosis took me out of training for months.
In business, navigating the Expand crossroads is one of the hardest and most exciting places to be. Unlike the previous two weeks where we talked about Refine and Reinvent, nothing is outright broken. In fact, business is good, revenue is coming in, and overall demand for your product or service is high.
Demand, however, is a double-edged sword. We need and want it, but if you’re not carefully monitoring your capacity, it’s easy to find yourself treading water, barely keeping your head above it.
So, what do we do when demand exceeds capacity and you feel like you’re underwater?
Where we look first
There are some key places to look right away and to be monitoring on the regular.
Team and Leadership
Do you have the right team in place? Are they clear on what’s happening in the business and the shifting expectations as demand continues to grow?
It’s easy to get stuck with a team that you put in place when you initially needed them but that hasn’t evolved with the business and its needs. Keeping the team up to speed on what is happening, how things are evolving, and where the potential obstacles are is vital to their happiness and your effectiveness.
Delivery and Quality at Scale
As I reflected on my half marathon experience, I had a training plan in place, but I didn’t design it to scale with me from the beginning. The pace I was training at wasn’t sustainable, and as a result, I ended up with an agonizing injury that lasted almost a year.
The same is true here. Sustainable growth looks different than just pushing harder or through the pain.
Do you have clear metrics that help you understand the larger landscape and give you an accurate picture of where things really stand? Has the client experience changed or degraded at all with increased delivery? Can the team meet the demand effectively?
Founder as Bottleneck
Are you still the one running every single mile yourself?
Unlike in a half marathon, your business can’t solely rely on you. When it does and your capacity is at max or overextended, that’s the perfect recipe for burnout, and you do not want to be sidelined at the exact wrong moment.
This is where I always encourage people to go back to some of the questions in the Refine bucket because making sure your systems, processes, and team are optimized for growth requires some real work.
Sales and Marketing
Here's the irony of navigating the Expand crossroad: you cultivated a ton of demand for your product or service, but that demand is actually sabotaging your ability to sustain that demand long term. That’s the feast or famine cycle in a nutshell.
It’s very easy to neglect the things that made your growth possible, like business development. You get so consumed keeping up with current demand that you stop doing the things that created it. A few months later, growth stalls for reasons that look mysterious but aren't.
This is why making sure you’re not the bottleneck is key. What are the things that only you can do? The rest belongs to the team or automated processes.
Engineer Your Actions
This is a step out of my S.T.R.A.T.E.G.Y. method, and I've learned from my own half marathon mistake that having a plan isn't enough. I had one. The problem was my plan stayed fixed while my actual capacity was changing and the support structures (my orthotics) were inadequate. And worse, I never really built in the space or time to notice the gaps before it became a sidelining injury.
So, ask yourself:
When did you last check whether your plan still matches what's actually happening right now?
Are there critical indicators telling you to slow things down that you’re ignoring (e.g. the team is drowning alongside you, customer experience is taking a hit, execution is scrappy in order to meet the demand…)?
What are you not tending to right now because you're too underwater to notice it's slipping?
A good coach catches bad form or worn-out gear before the injury happens.
Founders in Expand are moving too fast to notice what’s about to give out. Or worse, when you’re in the thick of it, it’s easy to ignore the red flags before those minor aches and strains become major problems.
It’s important to challenge a common myth here: if I slow down, everything will fall further behind. Yes, there’s a very short term chunk of time where that may be true, AND the long term consequences of burning your entire team out (including yourself), having a potentially poor client experience, or neglecting the marketing/sales/business development side of the equation means a much bigger failure down the road.
What's the strain a good coach would catch right now that you can't, simply because you're the one running? If you have an inkling… or aren’t sure at all, it’s worth getting an outside perspective to keep your business healthy and growing sustainably.
Next week: Release
Expand is about building what you need to sustain growth. Next week we're talking about Release, what it looks like when the business you build no longer serves you, your life stage, or your finances. How do we navigate what is often one of the most emotional business crossroads?
