Are you having difficulty balancing growth and quality in your business? Most organizations encounter this problem. The issue is, they grow too fast and become sloppy and compromise standards. One of the worst things you can do to your business is grow too quickly without having a plan or blueprint in place for the growth. Once quality is sacrificed it is a downward spiral, which leads to deficient performance, poor company culture, unhappy employees, and eventually loss of business.
If you are considering growing your business or in the process of growing, do it incrementally in a series of small, gradual steps. Regardless of the size, every business should have a business plan blueprint that clearly outlines the 5-year growth strategy and vision of the company. If you do not have a business plan, create one. If you do have one, refer to it and make sure there is a metric in place for measuring growth and quality.
The C-Suite should establish how the growth will impact the business AND the employees. Most organizations do not always consider the latter. If the benefits outweigh the risks and challenges and team members are aware of the plan, create a system that allows the expansion to occur slowly and methodically with department and team involvement. Everyone in the organization should be involved when it comes to growth potential, especially the quality assurance department.
Quality should be at the forefront of every organization. Too much growth too quickly compromises quality, which can be detrimental to a business. I have collaborated with companies that sacrificed quality because they were not prepared for the rapid growth and could not keep up with the demands of the expansion. When this occurs, the reputation of the company can be tarnished, and customers begin to lose trust in the brand.