How to Scale

“That was impressive, but at some point, you’re going to have to learn how to double tongue*,” my trombone professor said, much to my dismay.

(*When playing a wind instrument, you articulate notes by using your tongue. Single, double, and triple tonguing are all techniques to achieve clarity of articulation.)

I had worked up a technical etude to speed using only single tonguing. I was proud of this because most people had to switch to double tonguing to play the piece. My professor noticed my efforts, acknowledged they were impressive, and called out that I was shying away from what I needed to do: learn a new technique.

At times, this is what it takes for you (or your business) to scale.

To scale:

- Identify where you are the bottleneck,

- Document it, and

- Communicate with those around you.

But how do you do this?

First, identify where you are the bottleneck. Is it in a singular process? A certain area of expertise? Name the task where you personally prevent others from doing their job as quickly as they would like.

Next, document the task.

If none exists, start by outlining the major milestones necessary to complete the task. Follow the outlined steps the next time you do the task and see what steps you left out. Fill in those steps and repeat this. After a few iterations, you’ll have a complete guide on your bottle-necked task.

After you’ve documented these areas, seek to understand which of those items are yours and which ones are ones you’ve inherited or taken on as extra work.

That is, if the people who give you the prerequisites for the task are often incomplete, are you doing their job for them because it’s “easier,” or are you pushing back and making sure they’ve equipped you with what you need before you begin?

To scale, you must make sure you are not training others that you have the time, availability, and willingness to do things that are rightly their job.

Communicating with those who hand you work is crucial to making sure you, as an individual or business, scale.

When you don’t communicate and either accept or pass on incomplete work, you guarantee you as an individual will be stretched thin, and as a business, you guarantee a degradation in customer satisfaction.

To adequately communicate with those around you, you must be a practitioner of documenting what you do in a way that others can understand what you need and why it matters.

The inverse is also true. This habit will help you understand what they need and why it matters to them.

These three steps will help you understand whether you need to work on the technique you have or whether you need to develop a new way of working.

These steps work for both the individual and for the business.

The individual can work through this to identify where they need to stop doing other people’s jobs, ask for help, or justify additional headcount based on the volume of work.

Businesses can use this technique, though it will require additional iterations. The business can adopt this concept starting with its macro measurements. The C-suite and down must then continue to pull all the threads that make up the top-line measurements and find out which individuals need help.

I needed my professor to challenge me and learn a new technique to level up my playing. Whether you’re an individual looking to improve your personal world or someone looking to change the course of their business, let us help you recognize some blind spots you may be facing and teach you the techniques you need to take your business to the next level.

A closing thought for business leaders:

If something is important to the success of your business (department, or personal job), it must have an owner.

If you say something is important but no one owns the “important” thing, it is not important. Whether you like it or not, that’s the message you’re sending when you say something matters but hold no one accountable or responsible for the success of the thing.

As your business grows, your business will tell you previously neglected items require intentional thought and ownership. Pay attention to these warning signals as you strive to scale with success!