After writing http://aji.techshu.com/cents-to-dollars-growth-sustainability-business/ I thought to summarize the post here.

1. Ask if the owners/founders/management the bottleneck? Are you micro managing? Are you pissing off good people? Are you thinking small? Are you unable to pass on the vision? Are you not able to motivate your team to live the vision together? Are you the bottleneck?
2. Are you in the right market with the right offering? This is important to ask, sometimes we might go wrong, its good to go back and start it again. http://community.tiekolkata.com/profiles/blogs/sabeer-bhatia-3-questions-to-ask-for-any-product
3. Is your company’s vision (Direction follows vision) well defined? Is your company a company that is focusing on improving some part of the society? Are you passionate about improving your customer’s lifestyle by solving the problem to best level? (This is so so important: Whenever I hear, “How client doesn’t understand”, “Client can’t freeze the requirement” … I will repeat .. “Thats the problem, we are trying to solve, lets solve it better next time” … Focus is not on shouting at people and client but to solve the problem every day. Making life better.
4. Is your company a company where people want to excel? Or Is your company a company where its only about revenue and work? Excellence brings revenue. Excellence attracts good people and clients/customers.
5. Is your company focusing on developing people? (Even if they leave your company, they will stay the ambassadors to your company, “Give when you can  & Ask when you need it”)
6. Is your company a company where good people want to join? How are you selling your company to new prospect recruits? Are they buying your work culture, your business model, your challenges? (Grrr … Most good people don’t want to join government jobs …)
7. Is the company focusing on financial management? (Visibility is important, focusing on building the finance is important but it comes secondary to me, it is needed but a good combination of PEOPLE, RIGHT MARKET, RIGHT OFFERING should bring in money, why shouldn’t it? Many disagree here but I still believe, money follows)
8. Who all are thinking about?

1. Innovation
2. Value addition
3. New opportunities
4. Team members life improvements (This is major) Point #10 http://aji.techshu.com/11lessons-entrepreneurs/
5. Customer/Client relationships
6. Process
7. Cost cutting
8. Revenue improvements

(I am writing another post for Growth & Sustainability)
In my past 10 years of experience, I had opportunities to work with many great Entrepreneurs.  I have seen different growth and sustainability methods for different companies (and many contradicting ones but worked successfully). There is no one thing that works and there is no generalization that works, a company is highly directed by the top minds in the company. A company is a reflection of owner’s way of thinking.

As mentioned here http://www.slideshare.net/ajinimc/iimc-talk-on-digital-marketing-by-aji-issac-ceo-techshucom My first venture was my Church’s youth camp and it was a major success (From one stage where noone believed we could participate to winning it with small margins to winning it for years). From 2002, I am thinking like an Entrepreneur, had my own ups and downs but great leanings. Here are few cents from my experience

1. Every Entrepreneur is different, so your growth and sustainability principles will be different. Example: I am a domain expert (Digital Marketing), my way to go ahead is to improve Digital Marketing experience (The market is big, I can solve it, now I need to add resources (Finance, Processes, HR etc) to scale up, thats my growth & Sustainability. For an Entrepreneur who is more into networking will like to network around to make the best partners to make things happen. So it will be different for you. You are the company when you start and everything is build on top of you (most of the time, later it will change). Google was made on an algorithm by Larry page, Facebook was made by Mark’s need and so on and on (but later it is all different). I have also seen companies where there is hardly any independence but the work is fixed and defined. They too are successful but are limited by many ways.
2. Myths about Focus, keep your eyes open, focus is still not defined: In every article you will see focus, focus and focus .. my experience is (and as discussed at SSKolkata, many others experience is) … It is not easy to focus initially, you need to do everything possible to survive and work towards one expertise … Focus will come, keep observing and keep moving. If you have enough money, time .. you are already surviving … you can focus now .. If you are all alone, you are surviving, you can focus now.
3. Believe that you will be APPLE and GOOGLE - Everybody likes to hear the story of Facebook, Google and Apple. They will say “You know they started in a garage, how fun” but when it comes to really working in garage, its a tough call. So is when you need to expand. You are going good with 10 people, now you need to go for 30, you will have invest, you will have to take risk … its a tough call again as the risk is bigger …. You got to be your own motivator – Growth is uncomfortable at times, its like a child growing, the bigger the child grows, bigger are the responsibility and that is sometimes uncomfortable. You got to motivate yourself and enter change of orbit carefully and with believe.
4. You got to work with smarter people, smarter than you … This is one of major problem I have seen with people … They are not able to work with people smarter than them .. Also I have seen Entrepreneurs always going for better and better people. It is said A hires A, B hires C, http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/the_art_of_recr.html#axzz1ielqY0ni … Search for A hires A, B hires C articles on Google.
5. Flexibility & Skills: At different stage of your business you need different type of thinking http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1796 .. We (as owners of the initiative) need to see if we are the bottleneck at any stage of our business or not. Some of us are not good as managers, some of us are good as inventors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google (Google had to hire Eric as CEO and founders focused on innovations and product)
6. Broader thinking – What is this all about? What is big thinking after all …. My company will be 1000 members and 100 crores, is it big thinking? Big thinking is when you act according to your big thinking. If you know and believe your company is going to become big, you for that reason you can think of hiring someone whom you can’t afford now (even as a partner, or promise). I know that the company will be really big, I need to prepare myself, so attending and meeting other greater minds is important. “It’s ok to lose few thousands of Rs to create success stories” .. Think longer version in mind … Getting the wider picture. It’s not easy to explain this thought. Thinking small is a common problem I have seen.
7. There are many more points that are needed to fine tune an initiative for growth and sustainability. I will write another post.

Some Practical points that helped me:

1. Thinking alike to reduce learning curve – SVN and folder structure, now dropbox and structure. (Knowledge structuring) … For all our clients we have a folder structure where we have named it alike. So every person knows where to find a file, everyone ones what to do for a client etc. Thats to SVN and dropbox, our monthly cost for all these management was less than $5.
2. Thinking together – Process incubation folder & Dropbox (Knowledge management & Knowledge sharing) .. People keep adding documents to this folder, I keep organizing it (Later R&D team will do it, this quarter we have initiated the R&D team)… “I was promised an increment but nobody looked into it” … I will ask the HR to add a document for recruitment and thereafter .. we will keep working till we know we get a clear picture of how the process works and there is visibility and follow up. (Not easy but a process incubation folder helps us to start the process)
3. Dashboard – FengOffice + customization (I had to own the dashboard code) … Now we know where we invest our time, where are we losing money and where are we earning … who is working good and who is not.  This was one of most important thing for scaling, without this … measurement of various activities in the company is crucial.
4. Going fearless to make company better – Making team members public and bold http://www.techshu.com/bloggers/ … They need to own the company, it can only happen if we are fearless of losing them.
5. Hire them when they are available not when you need them: When you are small, small people don’t apply. Nobody wants to join a small company but there are some great people who come forward, don’t lose them. When we started the company, we had given open offers to many of the people whom we knew, they join at different stage of your company, whenever they say “YES”, we make space for them. Good people are very very important.
6. When a good person leaves, do given them open offer to come back: There are people who will leave because of different reasons (Grass is greener on other side), they might come back. We have a Facebook group which is always open for all ex, interns and current team members.
7. Anything that is repeative and non-intellectual should be automated. - http://www.techshu.com/faqs/ (Techshu leaks & Process excel sheet)
8. Programming is extension of your mind – SEOAPPY.com … automated a hell lot of things for our team.
9. You need to own the industry in longer term .. Jeetbo.com (for HR issues), digitalsoch.com (for corporate training) … anhour.in (for client education) etc to name a few.
10. Invest in good seeds – Always hired people with good background for top layer work .. One who can’t think of getting 2 lacs a month as a salary can never make your company going to 200 crorers. … http://www.seoforclients.com/about-us (Read the Jack Welch’s quote)
11. Work towards relationships – We have incurred heavy losses, still paying the debts … we worked for people for free, we did not collect the money when we could not deliver, we switched off few months payment to compensate … reason 2 relationships 1) With the client 2) With the ROI focused.
12. Define every word correctly … Our company is defined as “ROI focused End to End Digital Marketing Mix partner” (Every word is well defined and that is what stays with people”
13. Keep training people … They reject your wordings but sooner or later they will realize the need. Sweat in training to avoid blood in war… http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=155229661206652
14. Keep exploring new options … Keep thinking and keep documenting …. the documents allows me to see the complete picture, playing with your thoughts inside your mind is difficult but arranging it on a doc and rearraging it on a doc is easier. I had documents which were confusing for 2 weeks but it came out to be the best after 2 weeks.
15. Focus on Logic – Anything that is not logical is not supported .. Why should I ask my team members to come on time (when we are only 4), Why should I have a leave policy when we are only 10, why should I focus on accounting when my revenue is only 100,000.

This is a mail we got in one of the OCC groups and I just copied shamelessly to answer in detail.

My purpose for this post is basically an open question to everyone. I
would like to know some of your thoughts/criticism/experiences/doubts/
questions/etc on the following question. There is an internship fair
to be held shortly in Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, Ahmadabad and Bengaluru,
for which we need some inputs from you to make this a successful
event.

Q: As we all know there are many internship positions available in
various companies around the country, also that most of the intern
positions are filled by references or some connections.

– So what is that you as an individual, an employer or an employee
would want to change in the internship industry?
– What would according to you be the best way to hire worthy
candidates?
– What is that extra punch, that you would personally want to see
in \’Intern hiring\’?
– On what basis (parameters) should a candidate be alloted an
intern position?
– Do you think the companies should directly receive candidate\’s
application form, or should there be a filter who would vet the
candidates and match them to specific opening as per their abilities?

I request you to please share as much information as possible. it
would be really helpful for us really understand the missing links and
requirements of the internship industry. Once again, thank you very
much in advance for all the great responses you would send in.

Personally, I will like to have interaction with the candidate atleast 6 month before the internship or Ideally I will like an agency to contact us, understand our requirements, interview candidates, select candidates, we do the final round (atleast 6 months before the internship), then the agency should provide the materials to study for the internship and connect with us so that we can clear any doubts. After 6 months, the intern should enter with a purpose and gel with the team to do something that can benefit the company and himself/herself.

Our (AIMK MCA) internship was the best, we had internship in 3rd year (final year) first and second trimester, then one trimester was study and another trimester was off for either internal or external project. In this way a person who is interested to work with the company can even continue working for the whole last year without effective much of his study. I started like that, I left college after 2 years of MCA, I worked at Alumnus and then joined another company where I did my final project + final job. It was beneficial for all.

>> Do you think the companies should directly receive candidate\’s application form, or should there be a filter who would vet the candidates and match them to specific opening as per their abilities?
This completely depends of the company and the cost involved, since interns are not for long term, as a company we don\’t want to invest anything to get good interns … we just want to take few, try one stuff …. but in case if there is any intern that is interested for a long term with us, things can be completely different, we will like to have different layers of filters before they enter in ..

>> What is that extra punch, that you would personally want to see in \’Intern hiring\’?
We just worked with the IIM interns, they had their mentors (professors) guiding them, this is very much needed, we need mentors at both end, in company and in college.

>> – On what basis (parameters) should a candidate be alloted an intern position?
One interview + The CV (it shall go easy on them as the risk is less here for the companies)

>> – What would according to you be the best way to hire worthy candidates?
There is no best, there is one that suits us and there is another that suits others but in all cases we want good people to be in. I recently spent by 2 days with an intern, I got so upset as his basics were so poor (we did a bad hiring here), I think I shouted a little too much, he ran away, never came back again … this time we were more careful, we hired amazingly good interns and they are doing really cool. Loved working with them so far. They have already worked on FB apps, Joomla, wordpress and few more architectures ….

Hope it answers to some extend. Thanks.

Best Regards,
Aji Issac