A More Realistic View of Growth

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En provenance du cours de University of Virginia

Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Private Businesses, Part I

442 notes

University of Virginia

Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Private Businesses, Part I

442 notes

This course focuses on challenges faced by existing private businesses when they attempt to grow substantially.

À partir de la leçon

The Truth About Growth

This module presents an overview of growth in business with common myths and truths. There is a required reading: Edward D. Hess, "Growth is the Dynamic Confluence of Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Values." An option case study reading on Eyebobs Eyeware, Inc is also available. Please visit the Eyebobs website at https://www.eyebobs.com and think about whether Julie's vision and customer value proposition connects with you. What do you like about the site? What do you dislike? Why is her website so important to her business? What should Julie do to keep her website "fresh"?

Myths About Growth10:32

The Eyebobs Conversation26:00

Growth Research10:32

A More Realistic View of Growth5:36

A Growths Risk Assessment Tool10:47

Rencontrer les enseignants

Edward D. Hess
Professor of Business Administration
Darden School of Business

Welcome back ladies and gentlemen. Now I want to basically summarize the

concepts from week one, what I call a more realistic view of growth.

Now make a statement, the first statement on the slide.

Growth is like mother nature. Let's pause a moment.

I say mother nature what do you think about?

Hm, mother nature is good. Mother nature gives us sun.

Sun grows plants, grows food. Some, sun warms us.

Nice. Oh, wait a minute.

Mother nature can give us tornadoes, cyclones, hurricanes, earthquakes,

floods. Look, the little cow can be thrown off.

The houses can be blown away. The trees.

So why do I say growth is like Mother Nature?

And I'm pausing on purpose to give you time to think about it,

because growth can be goodm just like the sun.

And we've learned growth can be bad. Growth can destroy value if you don't

manage growth properly. If you let growth outstrip your capacity

to manage, or your controls, or your processes, or your people, bad things can

happen. If you let it go on too long, you can

lose your business you can lose your money. Some cases, you can also have real

emotional distress. Point number two,

growth should not be assumed. Don't buy into the false statement,

companies grow or die. It's just not true.

Rather it should be a decision made by you, weighing the pros and the cons of

growing and not growing. The pros and con's of growing and not

growing. That's what this is here, this scale.

How does the scale tilt? A scale can tilt like that, it can tilt

like that. And it allows you to take into account

that growth requires more people, processes and controls.

Now we're going to learn in the next class how to think about this, and

basically think about that very fundamental growth decision.

An entrepreneur has only so much time each day.

You can also add to that an entrepreneur only has so much money.

Alright. You have limited time, limited money,

limited people. What's important?

It's important that you prioritize your time every day and understand that growth

is expensive. In many cases if you're going to grow

your business, you have to hire more people, buy more raw products, maybe rent

more space. You have to pay out money before it comes

in. You have to think that through.

How much growth can you afford? How much growth can you afford?

How do you that? Because you do the numbers, okay?

What's the timing of the outlays? You gotta go higher, people.

You gotta go higher, people, if they want to be paid.

People don't want to basically come to work for you if you say, I want you to

come to work for me. It's going to be a month before we get revenue from your

work. So I'd like you to work for me a month

free. Uh-uh, it doesn't work that way in most

cases, unless they're family or really good friend, alright?

Or really good rich friend who doesn't have to work, alright?

How much growth can you afford? We've already talked about that growth

can put you into a different, more competitive space.

The game will change. Growth fundamentally changes everything,

because when you grow, you will learn, okay?

Then in some cases you need more and better processes.

You need more and better controls. You need more and better technology to

give you the information, real time, to manage your business.

And you will need more people, and unfortunately, in some people, you will

need better, more qualified people. Alright, let's stop here.

Another quiz. I told you you're going to have short

quizzes, so you can basically sort of put this

into your mind and think about it. That's how you learn.

Give meaning to this in your life and your stories and stories you know.

Give meaning to it from Julie's story. Given meaning to it from the images, the

pictures that I've tried to show you which gives you a visual representation

because the more you rehearse this and replay it in your mind, the more likely,

in the future when you need it, you will remember it.

I'll be back to you in a few minutes.

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