The Day Your Business Stops Feeling Chaotic Is The Day It Stops Growing
Imagine you woke up tomorrow and every problem in your business had disappeared. You find all systems working like a well-oiled machine. Your capacity problems are sorted. Your teams know exactly what to do.
At first, this feels like a dream every entrepreneur should work towards. But, what if it wasn’t? What if the absence of chaos was actually a warning sign?
Because, if every challenge has been solved, every process has been perfected and all chaos is at a momentary stand still, there’s a chance that your business is refusing to stretch beyond its current limits.
When businesses become chaotic, many entrepreneurs wonder if it affects their growth. They would ask doesn’t it mean we will only be putting out fires. The answer is that it depends on how you put out the fires. Do you build a fire fighting system or do you just temporarily water it?
If you stay in the business long enough, it will tell you that businesses rarely remain calm when the business grows. It growls and howls as it grows making you feel it’s pure chaos.
Think of it like this. Imagine you are boarding a plane. You will walk through the terminal, everything appears composed, announcements are made and people are settling for departure.
But, then you look where it matters. Outside the window, in the back-end it’s pure chaos. Baggage carts are moving in different directions. Fuel trucks are arriving and departing. Engineers are inspecting components. Ground crews are loading luggage while pilots communicate with air traffic controllers, looking for ground clearance. Hundreds of people are coordinating the chaos.
At the end of the day, everything falls in place, the chaos is under control. The airplane takes off and arrives safely. The business is booming. They didn’t eliminate the chaos. They designed systems that operate within the chaos.
Entrepreneurship works the same way. Each additional client requirement the business fulfills adds a layer of complexity. A spread of chaos that runs through the entire business with a ripple effect.
New markets create new risks. More customers create more expectations, and more opportunities mean more decisions. The irony is that founders mistake this uncertainty as a sign that something is wrong.
In reality, it is often a sign that something is working. The business is growing beyond its previous limits. The initial systems are failing to accommodate new requests that emerge with growth. Growth exposes everything that needs to evolve next.
Looking for perfect certainty is the enemy of progress. Seasoned entrepreneurs love this complexity, the discomfort and the headache that comes with new chaos, because it’s a good headache to get.
The entrepreneurs who thrive are not the ones who make it a goal to create a business model that continues to move forward when unexpected things happen every day.
What we learn in sport applies in entrepreneurship. Comfort isn’t a sign of success. Breaking your way through requires discomfort and controlled chaos. As an entrepreneur, you need to be the one holding the baton that tests and challenges your business.
So the next time your business feels a little chaotic, ask yourself a different question.
Is the chaos a sign that something is broken, or is it a sign that something is growing beyond its current potential?
