Business Owners, Managers and Leaders
Nicole King
Leadership Across the Stages of Growth

The Stages of Growth clarifies the optimal number of managers and leaders for a business. This blog post shows what that ideal number looks like across the seven Stages of Growth. This framework serves as the ideal for businesses to follow, with the management and leadership teams growing in proportion to the needs of the organization. In reality, however, many leaders miss these transitions.

Leadership Across the Stages of Growth
Business Owners, Managers and Leaders
Nicole King
Position Role Sheets

The Position Role Sheet is a management tool that organizes the work through Positions, Roles, and Types of Work. It is a fundamental way to accomplish the goal of first organizing the work before organizing the people doing the work. As a building block for departments of all sizes, Position Role Sheets break down the roles and responsibilities of each position within a department.

Position Role Sheets
Business Owners, Managers and Leaders
Nicole King
Enterprise Thinking: The antidote to department ...

This natural tendency to focus on the immediate needs of one’s department can work against the success of the enterprise. Due to daily challenges, needs, and opportunities, departments can become self-focused and lose sight of the big picture. The outcomes of this silo mentality are a lack of cooperation and hoarding of information. What works for one department might make things difficult for another. Departments begin to compete for resources without understanding or even caring about the needs of the enterprise.

Enterprise Thinking: The antidote to department silos
Business Owners
Nicole King
The Significance of Process and the 85/15 Rule

Dr. W. Edward Deming is recognized as the father of the modern Quality Movement that ignited new ideas and focused energy on process improvement. He contributed to Japan’s economic recovery after World War II, largely through his influence over manufacturing processes.

Dr. Deming was a champion of systems and processes. At one point, he made this poignant statement: “If you cannot define what you are doing as a process, you do not understand what you are doing.”

The Significance of Process and the 85/15 Rule
Business Owners
Nicole King
Why your business needs Key Performance ...

A Key Performance Indicator, or KPI, as it is commonly referred to, is a measurement that helps gauge the success of a business, department, or team. By tracking the outcomes that are being achieved, a company gets insight into what is and what is not working.  

Why your business needs Key Performance Indicators

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The Three Faces of a Leader - Stage 3

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The Three Faces of a Leader - Stage 3

In Stage 3, the leader ideally spends 10 percent of their time and energy wearing the Visionary Face, 60 percent wearing the Manager Face, and 30 percent wearing the Specialist Face. Stage 3 is dominated by managing work and people. Since the number of people in the organization has tripled from just two Stages ago, the Manager Face consumes the majority of the leader’s energy. For the first time in the Stages of Growth, the number of people in the organization exceeds the leader’s span of control. This new dynamic drives the need for the leader to delegate work they used to perform themselves.

Builder-Protector Ratio in a Stage 3 Company

Builder-Protector Ratio in a Stage 3 Company

In Stage 3, the ideal Builder-Protector Ratio is 1:1, which means there are equal levels of confidence and caution within the organization. This high level of caution helps stabilize the organization as it goes through the important transformation of being owner centric to becoming enterprise centric. The shift from being owner centric to enterprise centric is uniquely challenging. To manage the stress, the pace of change must be deliberately slowed. A reduced pace will create the stability needed to successfully survive the transition.

Addressing the Leadership-Staff Gap

Addressing the Leadership-Staff Gap

A Stage 3 business has between 20-34 employees. One of the top five challenges businesses of this size face is the existence of a gap between leadership and staff. A Stage 3 business now has too many people for the leader to directly oversee, which is why the leader needs to focus on delegation to managers. This new organizational layer can create an environment of inadequate communication with the staff.