Much of the guidance still applies in principle, but the presentation and examples do not reflect our current design guidance. Your task as a leader then is to know what makes each of these growth phases unique and what phase applies to your organization’s current status, as well as in which phase you are best able to contribute.This design guide was created for Windows 7 and has not been updated for newer versions of Windows. Nobody knows where you can best contribute better than you do. It’s just as plausible you’re well-positioned to excel at the change management aspects of scaling up but aren’t able to thrive in the slow-moving rigidity of the grown-up phase. It’s possible you’re an excellent startup CEO but don’t have the skills to navigate the social dynamics of the scale-up phase. The mismatch of skills from one phase to the next applies to leadership just as much as it does to the rest of the organization. An understanding of each of the growth phases accompanied by an accurate recognition of what phase your company is working its way through is imperative to your leadership, because the phases dictate where you should be focusing your attention, as well as what challenges you should be anticipating.Īt the same time, you must acknowledge your own strengths and interests as a leader. These challenges can catch the ill-prepared leader off-guard, especially if the leader isn’t aware of what stage their company is moving through. It’s an incongruence that cannot always be overcome, and it often leads to the exiting of veterans - either voluntarily or as a leadership decision. That’s a whole different skill set and a different lens through which to view the company.įor the craftspeople who have potentially spent years working on the product or service itself, this distancing from the intimacy of craftwork along with the readjustment of the company’s focus as a whole can be jarring. Instead, you’re developing and managing the systems that make or deliver the product or service. You’re no longer in the process of developing and selling a product or service. These exits are seldom easy, but the company is changing, and the people need to change with it. The longer the company has been in the startup phase, the more difficult that adjustment can be.Ī leader in the scale-up phase must ensure they have the right people in the company at the right time, and sometimes, that means exiting people who were there from the start and have made significant contributions to the company’s success. This mismatch requires a lot of social adjustment. The people who were a good match for the company when it was a startup are often not the best people to be working for the company when it begins scaling up. This resentment is usually accompanied by a mismatch of skills from one phase to the next. As a result, there is almost always pushback and resentful feelings from company veterans. You cannot scale effectively without rules in place, but imposing rules on a company that has previously thrived on the freedom of the startup phase is a major threat to the status quo of the existing culture. Culture and norms must become standardized throughout the company. You can no longer have half a dozen different platforms for communication. When leading a company through the scale-up phase, your job is to impose restrictions. While the development of the necessary processes and structures to ensure scaled growth can be difficult, it is often the social-systems aspect of this phase that proves most difficult for leaders. ![]() This phase is full of trade-offs, and a delicate balance must be struck. You’re establishing structures for predictable growth, but what you gain in reliability, you lose in flexibility and freedom. When scaling up, you’re shedding the nimbleness of the startup phase, but you have not yet achieved the stability of the grown-up phase. Growth is slower during the grown-up phase, and making big changes to a mature organization becomes increasingly difficult, largely because stability and predictability are key components of the company. It’s important in this stage for leadership to monitor and contain the inevitable creep of a bureaucracy. ![]() This growth is achieved through the identification of efficiencies in established systems and processes. The grown-up phase is focused on achieving continued growth once you’re big and established.
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