Back to Basics: Achieve High Growth Without Sacrificing Quality

Scaling your business opens doors to more customers and higher revenue. But growth comes with a challenge: maintaining the quality that built your reputation. Focus too much on expansion, and standards can slip, leading to unhappy customers, operational headaches, and a tarnished brand.

The good news? Growth and quality can go hand in hand, as shown by companies like Apple, Toyota, and Monzo. With the right approach, you can expand without lowering your standards. Let's explore practical steps to help you achieve both.

Hiring for Quality, Leading with Standards

If quality is your unique selling point, it needs to be woven into your company culture. This starts at the top, with leadership setting clear expectations and making quality a core part of every role.

Quality begins with intention. When hiring, look for candidates who meet technical requirements and share your commitment to high standards. During interviews, ask candidates (especially leadership candidates) how they define quality and excellence. Assess their attention to detail in everything from their CVs to their communication. This lays the foundation for a team that consistently values and upholds quality.

Leaders set the tone by embodying these standards. Their actions show that quality isn't just a buzzword; it's a priority. Employees and teams who maintain these standards deserve recognition and reward. These regular practices keep quality at the heart of your operations.

Embed quality into your company's values. Toyota is renowned for its focus on continuous improvement (kaizen), a commitment that permeates every level of the business. Monzo, while newer, embeds values like transparency and doing what's right for customers into its operations, naturally enforcing high service standards. When quality is built into a company's values, it becomes something employees take pride in, ensuring it remains a priority as the business grows.

Measure What Matters: Tracking Quality as You Grow

"What gets measured gets managed." is as true today as when Peter Drucker first said it. If you want to maintain quality as your business scales, establishing a mechanism for measuring quality is the first step. Without tracking, standards can slip unnoticed. If you're not measuring, you're guessing. And no one's ever built a great business on guesses.

Start by defining what quality means for your business. Is it about customer experience, product reliability, or service response times? For Toyota, quality ties to production efficiency and defect rates. Monzo focuses on customer satisfaction and swift response times, upholding their customer-first approach. Identify what matters most to your company and choose metrics that reflect those priorities.

Once your key performance indicators (KPIs) are clear, set up feedback loops to get real-time insights. Feedback loops can be as simple as customer surveys or tracking internal processes like response times. Toyota continually monitors production efficiency, while Monzo regularly collects customer feedback to ensure they're meeting expectations. Feedback loops are like a mirror.Sometimes they show you what you don’t want to see. Whether it's broccoli in your teeth, or a lower CSAT than you’d like, you’re always better off knowing. You’ll be aware of what’s working and what needs to be fixed.

Measuring quality is as much about celebrating successes as it is about addressing problems. Toyota recognises teams that exceed expectations; Monzo shares positive customer feedback with everyone. (And both companies build it into their branding and marketing.) When people know what "good" looks like and it’s measured, they’re more likely to maintain those high standards.

Document, Automate, Improve: Workflows that Scale

Scaling a business means more complexity, and with complexity comes the risk of inconsistency. To maintain quality, documenting workflows and processes is essential. Relying on memory or informal handovers won’t cut it. Proper documentation keeps your standards consistent, no matter how fast you’re growing.

Start early. Whether it’s handling customer inquiries, manufacturing products, or delivering services, these processes need to be captured, standardized, and made accessible. Having a single source of truth eliminates guesswork and keeps the entire team aligned, whether they’re working in the same office or across time zones. Documentation serves as a safety net; no one notices it until something goes wrong, and then it’s invaluable.

Documenting processes doesn’t have to be manual.  AI-driven tools can streamline workflows, automate approvals, and manage data entry, reducing human error, freeing your team for more strategic work.  You’ve got better things to do than play email tag for approvals, and that’s where automation tools can lighten the load. 

Regardless of whether it's hand-crafted or AI-driven, documentation isn’t a one-time task. As your business evolves, so do your processes. Without regular review and updates, outdated workflows can cause more harm than good. Toyota’s dedication to kaizen keeps their processes sharp, while Monzo’s automated customer service tools ensure quick resolution times, keeping both their team and clients happy. Regularly review workflows and update them with feedback from the teams using them daily.

Growth and quality can go hand in hand when approached strategically. By documenting workflows, measuring what matters, and using automation where it counts, you can sustain high standards while your business scales.

At Squirrel9, we don’t forget about quality. We help businesses measure, manage, and automate the processes that keep them running smoothly as they grow.

Book an appointment with us here or on LinkedIn to see how we can support your business in scaling without compromising on quality.

#Scaling #OperationalExcellence #CustomerExperience #GrowthStrategy #Quality #BackToBasics #Squirrel9

Back to Basics: Achieve High Growth Without Sacrificing Quality

This article was first published on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/back-basics-achieve-high-growth-without-sacrificing-quality-pmyoe