Most serious entrepreneurs do their homework, so it’s not a surprise that many start-ups are aware of issues that they need to look out for. Taking the steps needed to find adequate long-term funding, establishing good hiring practices, and keeping up with evaluative metrics are all concepts that responsible CEOs must attend to regardless of what business they’re starting. Yet there are still common mistakes that get made over and over again. The most serious of these is a lack of flexibility.
When most start-ups begin to make plans, they tend to focus on what will happen once things go right, or, if they’re somewhat prescient, on when things go poorly. However, the honest truth for every start-up is that while some things will go your way, other things will actively go against you. That’s why you need to plan not just for your successes, but also for your failures. Be flexible. Make sure that you can adapt to most any situation that comes your way. Maintain the capacity to pivot on business or personal goals as needed. This will make it simple to adjust to a changing business environment, or if the economy experiences a downturn, you will be prepared, and not lose as much business as your competitors.
Yet it’s not enough to just focus on the big picture; it’s also important to look at how flexibility is important in your day-to-day routine. For example, the flexibility mantra applies most specifically to IT staffing. More than anything else, technology will tend to fail at a higher rate than you expect. It’s imperative that you understand the basics of every technology your business depends upon, and it’s even more important that you have experts available to help in case something goes wrong. There is perhaps no better single boost to overall productivity in the long term than maintaining access to competent IT professionals. The IT department handles some of the most essential aspects of business, and it’s important that you find the right people for the job.
Depending on the size of your business, it might make sense to have professional IT people on staff, or you might be better off having a proper IT department on call through a separate agency. Either way, it’s necessary to have a team ready to troubleshoot through any problem you might have when one of your technologies eventually does fail. This single step will help you to maintain a level of flexibility that the vast majority of start-ups don’t have.
As your business grows, this reliance on a good IT department will only increase. Keep good metrics on how often and how severe technology failures occur, and use this data to judge how best to scale up what IT specialties you hire for over time. You might think it’s too early to think about what you’ll do in the future about scaling up services like this, but remember that good decisions come from good data. Begin keeping good IT metrics on day one. You’ll be glad of it later.
Article contributed by Jenna Smith