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Is Your Company the Victim of Its Own Success?

Written by Mae Mechkati | 20 October 2010

Congratulations. You have made it and now you can relax and reap the fruit of your hard work. Not so fast! You may not encounter any major problems in the beginning of the next phase of your business. However, if all you have been doing is adding to payroll, expending sales, ordering more materials, machineries, etc. to meet demands and address minor changes that have not been followed through properly, be aware of the warning signs of troubles around the corner to spoil your company’s continued success.

Can your company fall victim to its own success? There is never an easy answer for this. Yet this happens with small businesses more often than we think. The reasons are common. The fact that most successful businesses do not like to embrace change is a given because they are on top of their game. It is common to fear altering a winning strategy. It is understandable to fully rely on command and control tactics that lead us to success. A usual reaction to success is to stop evolving because we know where we are and do not need the fear of the unknown. The truth is no matter how resistant we can be to evolving, time will take care of it, so why not design a strategy to leverage opportunities ahead for your company. As you are celebrating your company’s success, pause to review the following to make sure you are not positioning your company to be a fit for today and not adaptive for a long lasting stable future.

These are my favorite top 5 questions to ask the owners and managing directors when they are celebrating their company’s success.

Have you reviewed your company structure to ensure strategic plans, policies and procedures have been updated to meet tomorrow’s demands?
Have you reassessed the leadership roles, the management processes, and skill and knowledge of your team?
Have you evaluated your competitive advantages?
Have you designed a new strategy for operations, customers and products to move you from growth phase to more mature phase?
Have you focused on how to set new metrics to evaluate performance and accountability among your growing team?

Moving your company beyond the success of today and the past means planning actions are necessary to help it grow to maturity. Your updated strategies will allow you to re-engineer a plan for a sustainable effective path for your company’s continued success and prevent it from falling victim to its success.

What questions would you add to the list?

Blog by Mae Mechkati, Founder and CEO of Prudence Consulting Group – the Change and Crisis Management Experts.