HELP! My business grew too fast.
Well, that escalated quickly.
Before we dive in...I want everyone to take a deep breath. You’re not the first person and you won’t be the last to feel this level of chaos.
For those of you who grew really fast…
Wise leaders throughout history have always been truthful to lead the faithful to understand, “in this life you will have chaos...but do not worry.”
I will tell you the same thing, “in this business, you will have chaos...but do not worry...you can be liberated from chaos.”
How?
Systems, Process, and Purpose.
Think about it... how does Nick Saban build a behemoth of a college football program in the midst of competition like we’ve never seen?
How do Novak Djokovic, Dawn Staley, Christiano Ronaldo, and others dominate their respective sports?
What you see and what you don’t see.
What you see are the game days, the trophies, the interviews, the lights, the flash, and the makeup.
What you don’t see are minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years of preparation, of practice, of miscues and mis-steps, frustration, and hopelessness.
You don’t see the moments in the toilet, with your head hanging down, feeling like you’ve been kicked and it would just be easier if we did something else.
Ed Sheeran describes it in his British lore, “You have to keep writing songs and get them out of you.”
We all have immature and undeveloped leadership inside of us that eventually has to come out, and then it is refined.
How do we get a handle of a business that has grown too fast? The same way artists, athletes, and the military deal with a situation that has escalated too quickly.
Clarity and Order through TRAINING, TRAINING, TRAINING.
When I was at the University of South Carolina we had to sign a piece of paper for the NCAA saying that we had not committed more than 20 hours per week to our football program.
Thinking back, we had winter workouts, we had spring practice, our summer workout program, the regular season, and then if you performed well, a post-season bowl matchup.
Doing the quick math, a college football player will easily train somewhere in the neighborhood of 500+ hours per year, and will spend only 50 hours per year in live game-time situations.
We spent at least 10 times as much energy and effort training than we did playing.
Military training is far more intense than that, and for some, they may never see live action.
Chaos calls for systems, process, and purpose.
In his adventurous book Sea Stories, Admiral William McRaven re-lives a mission scenario where helicopters were called in for an extraction, and in preparation, they had planned second by second alternatives and triggers.
Emotion would not steer the helicopters because it was life or death.
Chaos is not all bad. McRaven recalls his time in the conflict and chaos of war, saying, ““War challenges your manhood. It reaffirms your courage. It sets you apart from the timid souls and the bench sitters . . . It builds unbreakable bonds among your fellow warriors. It gives your life meaning”
This fast growth you have experienced can provide you with meaningful stories, adventures, and memories. Or it can eat you alive.
How do you know? You don’t, all you can do is build systems, process, and purpose... and then do the hard work of repetition and implementation.