Grow Your Business By Finding Your “Hidden”
Article Title: Grow Your Business By Finding Your “Hidden”
Organization
Author: Pamela S. Harper
Author’s Email Address: david[at]cameopublications.com (replace
[at] with @)
Have you ever wondered what enables some entrepreneurs to
exponentially grow their businesses while others go flat, or
worse? Their secret lies in their ability to find and lead what
I call their “hidden” organization. You may think you don’t have
an organization, hidden or otherwise, especially if your
business consists of a “gang of one” or there are only a few
employees on staff. But the fact is that even the smallest
businesses have an organization, and your success or failure is
determined by your ability to find it and then lead it in a way
that gives you more of the results you want.
This may be a totally new concept to consider. It’s easy to
think of giant corporations as having organizations. These are
the “internal stakeholders” consisting of employees,
departments and committees on the payroll. However, large
companies are realizing that independent consultants,
suppliers, outsource providers, alliance partners, customers
and other “external stakeholders” also play a critical role in
their organization’s ability to achieve high performance
results.
Just as your business is part of your customers’ external
organization, it also has external stakeholders of its own that
make up your hidden organization. The better you become at
recognizing and leveraging the power of these many
relationships, the more likely it is that you’ll survive
unexpected twists and turns in the economy, minimize problems,
and take your business to the next level of growth.
Who makes up your hidden organization?
It can be challenging to identify the many stakeholders who
impact your business. While some of these relationships are
obvious, it’s easy to overlook and underestimate the impact of
others. However, if you think of an external stakeholder as any
person, group or organization that has a stake (whether they
recognize it or not) in the success of your business, your
organization includes, but is not limited to:
.Customers
.Suppliers
.Outsource providers (payroll services, virtual assistants,
etc.)
.Advisors (attorneys, accountants, bankers, business coaches,
consultants, etc.)
.Alliance partners
.Subcontractors
.Competitors
.Business and trade associations to which you belong
.Advisory boards
When you uncover the wide variety of support, knowledge,
skills, capabilities, and resources that are available through
your stakeholders, you can offer services and products in ways
that you may never have considered before. For example, a
specialty-clothing designer with one store location teamed up
with an online distributor so that she now runs a global
business, reaching customers around the world. Even competitors
have found that there are a number of ways to benefit through
limited collaborations. The possibilities for growth are there
if you look for them.
While large companies have organizational charts that map out
functions of departments and roles of employees, you can also
create your own “organizational chart” to map out how external
stakeholders fill essential functions and roles that are
essential for conducting business. For instance, your
accountant, attorney, and insurance agent are important parts
of your “executive team.” Your organization also includes your
customers, along with the alliance partners, outsource
providers, and sub-contractors who may work with you to deliver
products and services.
As you continue to identify stakeholders, be sure to update
your organization chart on a regular basis. Depending upon,
your own goals, customers’ objectives and needs, new technology
and shifts in the economy, some stakeholders will take on
increased importance while others play a less important role
for a period of time.
Realigning your vision of your organization so it includes
these and other external stakeholders will enable you to think
about new ways to reach your customers, expand your
capabilities, and discover new opportunities for increased
revenue and profitability.
Leading and managing your hidden organization
Now that you’ve discovered your hidden organization, the next
challenge is to lead and manage it so that you are achieving
your growth objectives.
Clients often tell me that unexpected and persistent problems
seem to come out of nowhere (this is what I call “strategic
gridlock”). However, when we look back, it’s possible to trace
the source of problems to one or more common but mistaken
assumptions that we all make about our organizations, based
upon our individual perceptions of reality.
As you lead and manage your hidden organization, here are three
questions to ask yourself on a regular basis to begin to uncover
assumptions, avoid gridlock, and grow your business:
. What is the uniqueness of each stakeholder? Just as no two
people are alike; no two stakeholders are alike. Yet it’s easy
to adopt an approach to dealing with others that doesn’t allow
for these variations. This can lead to persistent problems,
especially if their values and practices are different from
yours. Understanding the uniqueness of each stakeholder will
help everyone get the most out of each relationship.
. Are my stakeholders capable of doing what I want? Since
external stakeholders have other priorities outside of yours,
unexpected changes in direction can easily happen. Consistent
communication with your external stakeholders minimizes the
risk of being blindsided by these issues, and allows you to
make contingency plans. It also alerts you to developments that
could result in new opportunities for your growth.
. Are my stakeholders willing to do what I want? External
stakeholders don’t always share your objectives or sense of
urgency. The more that you understand how they perceive your
objectives and what their needs are in relationship to yours,
the more likely it is that you can head off conflicts, improve
decision making, and negotiate solutions that represent a “win”
for everyone.
To fully meet organizational challenges and lead your
organization to high performance results, it’s essential to
know not only who your stakeholders are, but also what issues
they face and the impact those issues may have on you. When you
seek out the perceptions of your stakeholders on a regular
basis, you’ll be able to address any potential challenges from
a position of organizational reality, not individual
assumption.
Discover the power of your hidden organization
Many entrepreneurs, especially those who are used to working as
“gangs of one”, overlook and underestimate the many ways that
they can leverage and grow their businesses by working in
collaboration with their external stakeholders. .
Once you recognize that you are the architect of your own
organization, the issues of leading and managing organizations
of all sizes are the same; the same organizational principles
apply to mega-corporations as well as to solo entrepreneurs,
because even the very smallest businesses have “hidden”
organizations within them.
Harnessing the power of your hidden organization will help you
to discover untapped opportunities, avoid organizational jams,
and grow to new heights of success.
About The Author: Pamela S. Harper is founder and president of
Business Advancement Inc., and helps businesses of all sizes to
accelerate progress toward their key objectives. She is the
author of Preventing Strategic Gridlock: Leading Over, Under &
Around Organizational Jams to Achieve High Performance Results
visit http://www.businessadvance.com
