If you run a business, there?s a good chance you spend a lot of time thinking about success. You dream of getting bigger and better. That passion for success burns inside of you.
The problem is that sometimes that feeling is from indigestion because a business getting bigger often creates a new set of unexpected challenges.
While it may be hard to believe, sometimes things go wrong because you are successful.
Let?s compare the challenges of business growth to a vegetable garden.
When I was young, my family had a small vegetable garden in our yard. It was fun to watch a seed turn into something you could eat. We would often plant green beans and tomatoes.
There was an unexpected problem with our little garden. Sometimes the weather, the soil, and good luck would produce a bumper crop. As a result, we would be flooded with green beans and tomatoes. We were more successful farmers than we could have imagined.
The impact of our success was felt at the dinner table. While there are many wonderful ways to cook with green beans and tomatoes, after a while you start to get tired of them. Throwing out our surplus crop was never an option. Back then, there wasn?t a good infrastructure for donating the unexpected food.
Any solution took time and there was no guarantee of success. You could reach out to family and neighbors to see if they would like any free tomatoes or green beans. If they said, ?Yes,? then you?d have to deliver the items. If you were politely turned down, then you?d still have ever growing crop.
Through all of this, you might be tired of spending the time, picking food that you feel required to eat.
Let?s consider the growth of your organization and how it may be forced to deal with the products of success.
To handle your prosperity, you have to hire new people. They will need a place to work, so someone has to spend time buying desks, chairs, phones, and computers. Before long, you may have outgrown your current space or are dealing with performance issues due to overcrowding.
A lot of time is then spent with realtors and banks as you search for a new home. Productivity is put on hold as your operation moves.
None of these challenges are necessarily bad. But many don?t anticipate all the time they need to spend tending to the byproducts of success. It?s time that can keep you from doing what made you initially successful.
It?s easy to work toward a successful growth situation. It?s harder to think ahead about how you?ll address the challenges of achieving your goals.
You were so focused on getting to the top that you didn?t think about what you?d do when you got there.
In our garden, we knew that eventually the weather would change and our crop would end. Even the most successful harvest has an end.
The same thing can happen to your business if you?re not careful. Don’t just dream about your future. Plan for it.
