If our business is still at its early stage, then the decision to seek outside helps could come down to our capacity to execute, strength of our team, our business models and our personal confidence. If we have a credible plan, our business could progress nicely on its own. Obviously, we also need to have proper access to finance and skill. If not, entering any kind of business development project can be quite challenging. We should make sure that entering any of these programs won’t only serve as a kind of distraction. There are business development programs that can really diver our attention, because investors and mentors could get in the way and prevent us from properly focusing on our projects. Also, they can be rather confusing, because ten mentors could provide their own advice that may incompatible with one another.
Filtering advices can be a rather daunting task, especially if we need to seek guidance from experienced entrepreneurs and peers. Some of the advices can be perfect for our business, but there’s likelihood that many of them can’t be directly implemented to ours. We should have a screening process to find out which strategy that can we employ and what type of investor that we should work with. If we run a small-sized company, seeking external helps can be a real determining factor, especially if we need to achieve a more significant growth. Other than seeking to achieve growth, there could be new challenges that companies need to address as they expand their business operations. Many new business owners face hurdles of balancing their business development tasks and daily operations.
As is often the case, some companies at certain size tend to plateau for many months or even years. Executives could not be sure how they can consistently boost growth and achieve the next goals. As companies grow, they will encounter new set of challenges. For new companies that have recently entered a new business development growth program, it can be challenging to undergo the organizational transformation needed to grow to the next level. However, such a change could be needed to ensure future, sustained growth. There are many challenges that fast-growing companies need to face. They may need to ensure a high-degree of relevance in the changing marketplace. Implementing a sound governance structure could also be difficult. They also need to deliver and operate based on specific core competitive advantage standards.
It is also important for companies to build the right kind of business processes and institutional capabilities. Continuous innovation is required if a company need to grow progressively. These are just a few challenges that many small businesses need to face to get to the next level. However, critical risks could start to decrease as companies reach higher life cycle. Many businesses died during the first few years, because they don’t have the resources to sustain more than a few setbacks. Even so, the path can still be tricky and long for these companies. They need assistances from professionals to help them overcome new challenges. Eventually, they also need some external helps to rejuvenate their “business machinery”, which could allow them to continue the growth.