3 Team-Focused Growth Strategies For Early-Stage Startups

“Change is inevitable and accelerating. Organizations that manage it effectively will pull ahead of their competition. Change initiatives are time-consuming and costly, but by approaching change management with a disciplined approach, organizations can survive and thrive”, as PMI puts it.

In business, all innovators focus to develop company strategies to monetize and get a good market share. But not all people think about strategy execution. In his article, Antonio Rodriguez mentions that this stage of company transition can break company culture and revenues if management and change management are absent. These two factors are linked to strategic vision and strategy execution – giving them immense importance for the growth and success of a startup.

Having a short time to market ratio is more profitable for startups to make profits and maintain a good market share, obviously. However, it takes a dedicated, well-attuned team to make this happen. Focusing on the team spirit and company culture has shown to increase employee satisfaction along with profits. A good company culture is based on:

• Social relationships inside the company
• Motivated staff that achieves its goals
• Open, two-way communication with employees regarding strategy goals and financial statements

Why is this so important? Between strategy and product/service management, there is an implementation gap that every company should take into consideration. This gap focuses on being more competitive and a time to market ratio. Because every startup is created to survive it is necessary to focus on what drives the startup: the team. Therefore, employees should feel at home in the company in order to work effectively and efficiently. Or, in other words, every employee needs to feel like a family member of the company.

Here are three growth strategies to engage employees that will drive the success of your startup:

#1 Growing Through Change Management

Investing in time and deleting the “being too busy” mindset is a good option to help transform your startup into a large company. Implementing change management needs to take the following criteria into consideration:

• Focus: Clearly define the objectives and goals of change. This will help to measure your performance curve and change progress.
• Transparency & communication: Communicate effectively with employees help to achieve a sustainable company culture and involving your team by implementing their ideas and feedback.
• Motivation & feedback: Make sure your employees are satisfied with their job and provide feedback for both bad and good ideas.

#2 Caring Is Measuring

Measuring strategy implementation is crucial for every step in the change process. This will help monitor the change project flow and collect data for the person (most likely the CEO) responsible. References also talk about project office management to be created in the company as this will help to have an organized department to handle management tasks and projects.

If there is no focus to diversify company activities, your startup will soon face management problems and lose its competitive advantage. Bain & Company project that 90% of growth is coming from having a core business focus – a dilemma because growing sometimes needs diversification. However, the real challenge for startup managers here is to grow and stay focused on their mission.

#3 Making Sure Your Team Is On Board

You may be asking how you should act as a new player in the market? I think that startups should focus on a market where competition is very intense to have a quick learning curve from the market.

Make sure your team is aware of the strategy before you go for it. It may well be that some of your employees don’t fully understand what it’s all about. Making them understand your strategy and make them understand why you want to go for it. This ensures that your team is on board with your vision and, ultimately, make it their vision.

However, when you want to enter a highly competitive market you should know exactly what your core business will be, what the price fluctuation for the end product/service will be and how you can use these measures to grow. All these questions are the basic points to establish a business plan. And no matter how much engagement your employees show – this is the first step to successful growth.

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