Chaos is a Common Challenge for Stage 1 Businesses

A Stage 1 business has between 1-10 employees. One of the top five challenges businesses of this size face is destabilization stemming from chaos. On the one hand, this is intuitively obvious. A small business that is in start-up mode is struggling to get a toehold in the market, typically lacks capital, and is still trying to define exactly what it does and who it serves. Chaos seems inevitable, right?

While it’s true that anyone who works in a Stage 1 business should be aware of the challenges, and expect chaos to be part of the mix, it’s also true that there are real threats to the health of the company if this challenge is not addressed.

Typical Symptoms

The typical symptoms that can be found in a company that is destabilized by chaos include:

  • Employees who are stressed out by chaos or disorganization

  • People who don’t know how to get work done

  • Processes that are unclear or non-existent

As a business owner, you don’t want your employees to be overly stressed or unsure how to go about doing their work. Nor do you want the burden of unclear processes slowing everyone down.

Key Elements to Address the Challenge

The Organizational ReWilding framework is composed of 11 Elements. Each one is integral to the health and full-functioning of a business. When a business experiences the challenge of chaos, there are three elements that should be implemented in order to address it.

  1. A Business Growth Framework will provide the team a way to move in a common direction, even if it is a bit chaotic getting there.

  2. Critically thinking about the company’s Business Model will create clarity around what the company does, for whom, and why. Having this underlying structure will increase the stability of the organization, even amidst operational chaos.

  3. Establishing Organizational Structure will help organize the work that is being done, independently of people, which serves to reduce the chaos of workflow (even as the team grows and changes).

Why this Challenge Must be Resolved

Businesses that fail to address the challenge of destabilization from chaos will struggle to retain employees and will lose valuable time and money to inefficiencies. These factors can easily take an otherwise promising company out of the running, relegating it to the category of start-ups that fail.

To get help with implementing the three Elements recommended in this article, contact The ReWild Group or check out our Element Guidebook Series.