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At what stage in its life-cycle is your business?

Being a positive catalyst for effective transformative change is central to my mission as person, business professional, father, husband, friend and member of my spirit community.

It takes courage to slow down and ask ourselves important questions. It also takes courage to slow down to ask yourself at what stage in its life-cycle is your business. This type of leadership in action gives you clarity about how to face the challenges of moving your business forward. A successful enterprise is a powerful platform to help us, our employees, partners, vendors and stakeholders realize some of their dreams and aspirations.

The chart below will help you recognize the characteristics of each life-cycle stage and necessary corrective measures.

Stage / Size	Employees
	up to 14	15-99	100+
Start-Up Planning the Business Developing a Strategic Plan Executing the Strategies Effectively	The business behaves like a family. Staff know one another well and extend themselves to help their colleagues for the good of the team. Priorities are juggled hourly or daily, and the long term vision may be unclear. The business is managed tactically rather than strategically.	The business starts to grow structure and may hire additional management. Job roles become narrower and more focused. Personal agendas may take precedence over real business imperatives. Communication starts to become a major issue. New staff may be left out of the loop by founders and early hires. Company growth may stretch managers beyond their personal capability The need for a clearly articulated, visible, measurable strategic plan becomes critical.	The business is now constantly searching for growth and to keep processes on track. Multiple new initiatives may be tried, often without proper measurements to ascertain their effect. Communication continues to be a key issue as strategic priorities become harder to determine. Proper strategic systems, automation of core process measurements and automated alerts and reporting become critical success and survival factors. Regular strategic reviews take place to ensure direction is correctly maintained.
Growth Staying on Track – Maintaining Strategic Focus Strategic Budgeting Partnerships
Established Keeping your competitive edge Improved Efficiency and Effectiveness	Focus now is on maintaining competitive leadership and watching out for new entrants feeding off your success. Already-proven processes can now be optimized to gain speed and cost advantages. Strategy should be regularly reviewed to keep the business sharp.	Integration of people, processes and systems takes on a high level of importance. Major investments mayrequire complex business cases to predetermine their potential ROI before committing funds. Throughout the business, a clear, measurable strategic plan is required with cascaded initiatives, measures and tactical execution plans to communicate the direction of the business. Regular reviews need to be more formal, while transparent governance ensures accountability to and for all stakeholders.
Struggling Need help to find new products, markets, customers, better faster cheaper ways, new cashflows	Fast strategic problem-solving and crisis management urgently required. Critical review of product and service portfolios, customer segments and processes to seek out and instill profitability. R & D spending may attract government grants or concessional loans. A fresh perspective can be instrumental in resolving the problems, strengthening the business and taking it into the future with a clear, communicable strategy.

No matter which life-cycle stage your organization is in, if you would like to have a confidential discussion with one of our consultants about where your business is heading and what you can do to improve it, please connect with me at any time.