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.
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.
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.
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 Stage 7 leader is tasked with reigniting the entrepreneurial spirit that characterized the organization in earlier Stages. They achieve this through creating a compelling vision, one that is shared amongst the Leadership Team and clearly communicated to the entire organization. In contrast to the previous Stage, where the leader guided the Leadership Team in creating the vision for the future, the leader is now collaborating with the Leadership Team to create that vision.
Stage 7’s Gates of Focus are People, Process, then Profit. The number of employees in a Stage 7 company is double or triple what the company had in the previous stage, an increase that demands for People to be the top priority. The primary way a leader can successfully show a focus on People is by investing in the growth of the Leadership Team. The company is too large for the CEO to have regular, personal interactions with all employees. He or she must rely on the Leadership Team (who in turn invests in the Management Team), as the primary driver of successful employee engagement.
In Stage 7, the ideal Builder-Protector Ratio is 2:1, which means there is twice the level of confidence as caution in the organization. The 2:1 ratio reflects a relationship between Builders and Protectors that advances the company at a sustainable pace. The company will need to double its number of employees to grow completely through Stage 7, a process that can take a long time.
Known as the Visionary Stage, one of the top five challenges Stage 7 businesses struggle with is a marketplace that is rapidly changing. With between 161-350 employees, the business has grown to a point where it is no longer quick and nimble like it was when it was smaller. To remain competitive, the organization must be able to methodically identify and pursue market opportunities.
