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

stage 5

The Three Faces of a Leader - Stage 5

The Three Faces of a Leader - Stage 5

Stage 5 is characterized by a strong management team that is the organization’s driving force. It also marks the return of a significant focus on the Visionary Face. With a strong management team in place, the leader is now tasked with presenting a clear, compelling vision that engages these managers, so they can in turn guide the staff with a clear vision and common language. In Stage 5, the leader is responsible for painting the picture of the future but should be empowering the management team to get the organization to that destination.

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Gates of Focus in a Stage 5 Business

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Gates of Focus in a Stage 5 Business

Stage 5’s Gates of Focus are Profit, People, and Process. In Stage 5, the attention must now return to Profit to ensure that enough capital is generated to sustain a larger organization. A leader can successfully focus on Profit in two key ways: 1) ensuring business development has a synergistic strategy across marketing, sales, and customer service to generate consistent and growing revenue; and 2) tasking departments to lower costs.

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Inadequate sales are a common challenge for Stage 5 businesses

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Inadequate sales are a common challenge for Stage 5 businesses

A Stage 5 business has between 58-95 employees. Known as the Integration Stage, one of the top five challenges businesses of this size face is inadequate sales. A big reason why increased sales are so important at this Stage is the need to cover growing organizational expenses. The company can no longer expect to keep growing through word-of-mouth and must establish Business Development strategies and structures that are repeatable and can scale with the organization.