What would you like to build ?
A small client-oriented company, that scales according to the number of people/consultants working there ? A valid option, I admit. Let’s call it “category 1”.
What about a company that scales beyond the proportion of the actual number of people working there ? That’s an interesting option, as well ! Let’s call it “category 2”.
The difference between those 2 valid options is that you can more easily raise capital for the second one, simply because it promises bigger return and offers smaller risk.
In the current culture there is a saying of being focused on the client, being “client-oriented”. That’s a good option, but which works if you are working within the first category, because each worker is assigned to a specific purpose to a specific client(s). You can’t scale that much, because, as you should already know – a day has 24 hours.
If you want to be in the 2nd category, if you want to be a scalable service, you will need to stop being EVERY client focused, and start being a service-focused company. You should be investing more in the service and think more about the quality of your service – then just simply run behind every single client. That does not mean that you are not building your service as a client-focused one, if you just focus on the service for the sake of the service – most probably you will be out of the business sooner then you can imagine. Of course, the service must be focused on the clients, but not on a particular one, but on the whole population (think statistics).
Ideally you will want your service to be the star (term from the Growth Share Matrix) and not a question mark (GSM term) or a question mark (GSM term).
Naturally you will pick your top customers and make sure that they are satisfied, but you will be focusing on the best average service possible (Which should be remarkable, of course, but should serve the average client that you are making it for).
The funny thing is – we live in the times that when you do not have a service, someone else will build it and will challenge you for the market.
It sounds to me that in the IT market a lot of times if you want to be in the second category – you will not have a choice, but to be service-focused.
Totally agree, doing both it is almost impossible, however nich markets are still good options for both categories. Can you see yourself leading a company that embraces both, having customer oriented people, service oriented people and people building the bridge between both?
This will bring the need for a management 4.0 or 5.0 for sure…
The challenge is awesome if we think in the capabilities of ML, AI and human infinite imagination.