Why ‘thinking small’ is one of the best strategies for sustainable business growth

Do you spend sleepless nights thinking about what your business might look like in 5-10 years? A global phenomenon? Huge profits? The market leader? The greatest place to work voted by employees?

These are fantastic aspirations, and it’s always great to think big and push boundaries.  

But, focusing too much on the future can sometimes be detrimental to the present.  It’s not always as exciting, but getting the core business model right before scaling; fixating carefully on each element of your business and building an unshakable foundation is the way great businesses are built.

Some of the highest profile organisations on earth started from humble beginnings.  Facebook started out as a networking site for college students in the US, they identified a desire and built on it by slowly introducing it to other campuses in the US, then gradually made it available in other countries.  Innocent Smoothies was just a group of Cambridge uni graduates who obsessed about making a great product and started selling from a stall at a music festival. Air BnB was set up with three air mattresses and a one page website, the concept was simple and it worked so they slowly evolved it.  At the point they all started, their focus was on getting their product or service right for that small group of customers who wanted it. The growth came later. 

By becoming obsessed with customer centric delivery; a fixation on your people and their happiness; a commitment to managing your finances effectively; and ensuring your product or service is constantly evolving to be best in class, the future of your business will be reflected in the quality of every single element you choose to excel in. 

So, next time you find yourself getting sidetracked by aspirations way ahead, that may or may not come to fruition, focus on a couple of significant changes you can make today that will impact performance tomorrow.  By ‘thinking small’ and getting the detail right, you’ll sow the seeds to create big future opportunities, some of which you may never even have dreamt of.