Just like the goal of growing a fruit tree is to harvest the fruits, the purpose of starting a business is to make profits and create a positive impact. A business needs to navigate through challenges and grow to its full potential to maximize profits. The growth phase is not a walk in the park. It plays a significant role in the business's existence and often negatively affects the entrepreneur's personal life. This phase contains many challenges that are referred to as navigating business growing pains. The term "growing pains" refers to temporary difficulties and problems a growing company experiences during a particular stage in its development. This expression derives from the pains in the legs a growing child feels have no demonstrable relation to growth. In business literature, the term growing pains has always been perceived to have a negative and dramatic connotation. I have also perceived it with the same attitude for a long time, but after working with entrepreneurs for over 20 years, I changed my viewpoint on growing pains. In this article, I will share my perspective on the importance of growing pains to an entrepreneur, how to successfully sail through them, and how to get back in the driver’s seat during this phase when you may feel like losing control of your business. Why is navigating business growing pains crucial? If we observe keenly, growing pains are inevitable. For every goal we set, there come challenges and problems. These challenges are not pleasant, and some give a painful sensation. Isn’t that normal? When was the last time you accomplished something worthwhile without having to overcome a problem or challenge? The answer is never, correct? When we look at the growing pains from the above perspective, there is a clear indication that growing pains are an indication of progress. They can form a basis for reevaluating your decisions to avoid deviation from your original path. Overcoming the growing pains is the salt and pepper of any entrepreneur's success, joy, and happiness. Here are some simple examples: If you run short of time to deliver an important project, you put in more hours, and the project succeeds. You enjoy the fruits of putting in extra time. When you realize you need an extra employee, you hire one, and the problem is solved. It gives you the joy of solving the problem. If you detect a misunderstanding and disagreements in your team, you take time to sort them out, and the team starts operating with good understanding. You feel the progress. As we can see, the growing pains are intimately part of the company's growth. To handle them well, the entrepreneur has to consider them as their allies and use them to grow bigger and achieve their goals. The key concept here is to be able to handle the problem or challenge. If an entrepreneur can quickly control all the growing pains, they will have an evergreen and sustainable company, as the illustration below represents. From the above illustration, we can see a…

Is embracing the Great Resignation possible for business leaders? Lately, my focus has been on the remarkable phenomenon known as the Great Resignation, where many employees within the Western labor market voluntarily embrace change by resigning from their current positions or transitioning to new roles. Coined in 2021 by Anthony Klotz, an Associate Professor of Management in the Organizations and Innovation Group at UCL School of Management, this term encapsulates our transformative shift. HR professionals highlighted the common reasons people were leaving their jobs: wage stagnation, looking for greener pastures or a toxic work environment leading to burnout, etc. My thoughts on this new trend gave me a unique perspective I want to share with you in this article. The underlying hidden reason When I looked closely at the reasons for this critical movement of people towards other jobs and career alternatives, I realized that they all lead to a common denominator: an imbalance between what people invested in their jobs and what they get out of it. The input is far more significant than the return. The returns we are considering here are not only the financial compensation but things like fulfillment which varies for different individuals. Stated differently, people are leaving their current jobs and investing their energy in jobs that provide them satisfaction and not necessarily financial gain. I would say they have an “individual fulfillment bankruptcy." I don’t think people would leave jobs that are the source of fulfillment or meaningful jobs that bring them happiness. The surge in the number of people discovering the misalignment between their well-being and professional development is just an outbreak of a long-existing situation.  Three types of jobs Continuing in that line of thought, I concluded that jobs could be classified into three types: The assignments that energize you provide you pleasure and fulfillment: Green Jobs The jobs that suck your energy, drain you out, and frustrate you: Red Jobs The jobs that neutral. They lie in the middle where they neither suck your energy nor energize you: Yellow Jobs. You should avoid Red Jobs every time it is possible. External unplanned events can turn a Green Job into a Yellow or even Red Job. The danger connected with the Yellow Jobs A vast majority of the workforce is satisfied with a Yellow Job. One could say there is nothing wrong with having a neutral job that doesn’t give any fulfillment and doesn’t take a lot of your resources. This mindset is very dangerous in the long run, as they slowly decline towards the Red Job. There is a boiling frog syndrome associated with Yellow Jobs.  According to the boiling frog legend, putting a frog in boiling water will immediately jump out because it notices the sudden temperature change. When the frog is in lukewarm water, it will not jump out but adapt to the surrounding temperature as it does not detect the danger yet. If the water is continuously heated slightly, the frog does not jump and keeps adapting…

As John made his way to the driveway into the garage, he glanced at his watch and noticed it was past 11 pm. He parked the car and sat there thinking about the day's events. John felt dissatisfaction take over as he remembered he had promised to have dinner with his family that evening but failed again. He had not seen his son for the past three days. The frustration was even much higher when he thought about his parents who are in a period of their life where it was his duty to take care of and be there for them. As he got lost in thoughts about the reality of his current life, his attention turned to the big project for an important client to start tomorrow. He needed to be there by 7 am to coordinate and supervise the kickoff meeting. This meant he would wake up early and leave the house before his wife and son woke up. This was John’s schedule every day. His mind and every cell in his body was occupied with the business. It had been years of planning for a holiday and time off from the company, but something always came up at work that needed his attention. This was taking its toll on him, but he saw no way out, and the idea that he was doing something he loved kept him going. Nine years ago, when he started the industrial water purification venture, John was inspired and had fun daily making his idea a reality. Everything went as planned, and he succeeded in the business! Today he is one of the best experts in the industry worldwide. He works with about 30 people locally and has developed an important network of freelancers whom he collaborates with globally. His success in the business has made him travel from time to time for conferences and workshops around the world. The company is financially viable, and the more he is on stage, the more business opportunities keep opening up. John has become overwhelmed to an extent he cannot take on all projects that keep making their way to his table. This is one of his biggest frustrations. All he wants to do is help; the demand is there, but his hands are already full. When he got into the house, everyone was already asleep. As usual, he prepared for the next day by going through his calendar. He noticed he had allocated his evening the next day to an alumni cocktail event planned for months, and he had no intention of missing it. He wanted to take some time to cool his mind, and his best friend and roommate from campus, Eric, had confirmed attendance, and since they had not met for a long time, it was enough of a reason to take a few hours from work to attend the event. He rushed into the community hall; everyone was already there. The event had already started, and people were socializing when…

Every business has a culture of some kind. But you can't change your culture any more than you can change your brand by just talking about it, or even teaching it. You have to make systemic changes in your organization that transform the way people think and behave. People are deeply influenced by their work environment. Weaker people can become highly productive and stronger people can lose their edge, depending on your company culture. The magic really begins to happen when the right people come together with remarkable business systems to create a culture of results through discipline, enthusiasm and high performance. It is the primary concern, and responsibility, of every business owner, manager or executive to create a culture of results inside their company. This is created and maintained through disciplined adherence by every employee to ensure profitability and continuance of the company’s operation. ((Efficient People + Motivation) * Accountability) = Effective Team Results Where does it start? HIRE THE RIGHT BEST PEOPLE Let me repeat from author Jim Collins,  "Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people. GET THE RIGHT PEOPLE ON THE BUS FIRST, AND THE WRONG PEOPLE OFF THE BUS, THEN FIGURE OUT WHAT DIRECTION TO DRIVE THE COMPANY" (Good to Great). Only hire "A" employees. These people have a history of getting results. They aren’t afraid of accountability and scorekeeping. They are self-confident and able to apply past successes to new assignments, but they are also teachable and eager to learn. "A" employees make good things happen, especially when their personal goals are in line with your company goals. Keep in mind: You always pay for the "A" employee. The lesser cost of a "C" employee, plus the hidden cost of lower performance, poor decisions, and costly mistakes, is equal to or greater than the higher cost of the "A" employee. Replace "C" employees with "A" employees to improve performance and get results. Take Away:  Hire and empower goal-oriented people. Tell them why the system was created, how it works, and why it will benefit them. Enlist their knowledge, talents, energy and resources to improve the system and raise the bar on performance standards. As people achieve results, their self-esteem and sense of value to the company will go up. They will set new performance records. When they create greater value, compensate appropriately. MOTIVATE YOUR PEOPLE Inspired and motivated workers, that know how their contribution helps, make well-designed systems hum!  Results are a natural and ever-increasing outcome of understanding this concept. Motivation is the drive that moves people to action. People are motivated when they feel they are doing something in their best interest. Because motives come from feelings, you can't directly motivate others; you can only influence their feelings about the work they do. You can create an environment or culture of results that…

All along I had a strong feeling that with these lockdowns, the rate of domestic violence and crimes would go up. To my surprise, I recently found that this wave of interrelation conflicts didn’t just strike homes but also the business world. Visiting two of my clients with whom we had established harmonized teams before lockdown, I noticed a change in behavior and performance as some employees seemed to be stressed by this pandemic situation. As employees try to live with the constant uncertainty and the continuous requirement to adapt to new conditions, tensions in relationships become more prominent, and mismatches in personality become more visible. The team members who don’t take full responsibility for their functions create friction and frustrations for those who have to cover for them, which leads to loss of motivation and an unpleasant working atmosphere. On top of that, working remotely demands a higher level of communication. In a normal face to face meeting without masks, one might easily notice when a point is not well understood and address the issue with minimum damage. However, in a remote working situation, one idea that is poorly communicated through email or any other platform might cause latent conflicts or frustrations. And indeed just like a virus, the consequences of conflicts can also be rampant. A poor organization in one company affects other companies working on the same project. This amplifies tensions in the companies causing ineffectiveness and unproductiveness. Fortunately, by walking along and working with managers, some have now been able to get back to their driver’s seat. Solving problems and situations that were pulling them down and making the horizon even clearer. Thus, understanding that employees’ engagement has been shaken by this crisis is key to restoring a clean-cut path to a company’s recovery. The commitment of the business owner to employees remains essential. Surely support within the company should be offered to solve the collateral damages caused by the lockdown but also supporting other companies with which one works with shouldn’t be ignored. No Peace – No Business To read more about business recovery click here