Efficiency and Scale
Thinking about this topic has been top of mind for my customers and others I talk to. With the current economic climate and the shift in focus to profit and margin over top line revenue has brought the efficiencies of Customer teams into focus for many organizations. This is part one of two.
This blog would be simple if we just automate everything done and done we can move onto other things now. Of course ChatGPT is taking over the world and there are automations everywhere. How does this impact a customer facing team where we strive to deliver value and expertise to our customers that help them grow their business and receive meaningful outcomes. With this in mind we move to scale, in my experience Efficiency and Scale get used interchangeably, however this is not entirely the case. If you want to scale your current operations, you can accomplish this in many ways and not all of these will be efficient. So how does a leader who led a team from 8 people to 175 in 2 years create an efficient team while scaling fast?
Most managers and directors will first look at hiring as a way to scale a team and while hiring is part of scaling efforts it may not always be required to achieve improved efficiency. Some thoughts on what it takes to scale effectively and efficiently. Where I would start is by gaining agreement on the key drivers for growth which I suggest are the following:
Revenue – Consistent revenue growth increases company valuation. It also provides the funds to hire new people and make new investments
Retention - Keeping our customers drives rapid growth. It also pays salaries and expenses we have.
Margin – Is used to ensure we are growing appropriately based on our revenue. It also helps us understand where to focus effort to create efficiencies.
Scalability – Is important because this is what investors will value when making our next round of investment. Without scale it will be unlikely to get a desirable valuation.
Secondly my focus turns to what is scalability. These are the four pillars that in most cases will drive scalability.
This leads to more questions you should be asking yourself about the scale of team
People
What changes allow for growth without dramatic increase in people?
Do we have the right people on the team to grow the right way?
Does everyone understand how to do their role
How are we improving skills of people
Do we have all the right skills on the team?
Culture
Do we follow our values?
Do we think about our decisions with scaling in mind?
Do we focus on the right things to help us scale?
Is there a sense of urgency?
Do we pursue perfection?
Process/Operations
Have we considered any changes to process for efficiency and the associated risks?
Are we doing this because we always have, is there a different way?
Does everyone follow processes and operate the same way?
How are we measuring process adherence, performance and optimization?
Do we know enough about our work to find automation?
Is the organization structured in a way that will allow for flexibility and growth?
Product
Are we sharing openly with our product team our challenges?
Can we help the product team help us solve our challenges?
How do we ensure the teams use new product features?
Are we reviewing processes, operating models and time on task after new products are released?
Technology
Do you know enough about what each role does to determine what can be automated?
What technology can be used to automate daily tasks?
Do we have redundant technology?
Have we considered technology to solve efficiency/process problems?
The third area of focus on scale is what I call the Enemies of Scale. These generally get in the way of the ability to scale and usually require a change in behaviour from the team and/or organization.
80/20 - Building operations to support every edge case and exception.
Decision Making - Being reserved in decision making. Choosing not to make a decision is the worst decision,
Urgency - Not recognizing the urgency of actions and focusing scale items will less urgency
Willingness - Thinking that new way so working, processes and changes cannot be done or we have always done this way.
Going through an exercise like this helps you understand the nature of what is happening currently and will start to frame your planning for the future. In the second part of this series I will provide an overview of tactical approaches to scale. How to gain an understanding of where your focus is best served and some things that are at times not thought of when focusing on scale.