When you’re a one-man band it has to be personal.  Conventional wisdom has it that you can’t keep it that way if you plan to seriously scale.  It’s almost a definition of ‘corporate’ that ‘I’ becomes ‘they’.

I believe that this loss of the personal is part of what puts many micro-business owners off growth, not the ‘lack of ambition’ ascribed to them, by government reports.

Conventional wisdom is not wrong – as the business founders insert layers of hierarchy and function between themselves and their customers, the relationship between business and customer can often feel impersonal, transactional.   A brand, no matter how great, isn’t a person.

What’s wrong is the assumption that introducing functions and hierarchies is the only way to scale.

What if, at that point where 10-ish people work with you, you decided to make them all ‘the boss’- each one of them capable and authorised to deliver on your promises the way you do?

What if, instead of splitting the customer experience into separate functions, you kept it intact from end to end and made each and every person in the business responsible for delivering it to their clients?

What if, instead of introducing layers of management to distract your team from your customers, you gave them a Customer Experience Score to follow and let them manage themselves?  With responsbility for the consequences of course.

You’d scale your business and keep it personal.  It’s just that the person your clients deal wouldn’t have to be you.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

 

Intrigued?  Ask me how.