Context, Confluence, and Complexities

Sydney E. Martin and Ronald J. Stupak

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Like people, organizations go through passages and grow to levels that challenge their competence. The ability of leadership and management to adapt and evolve through these changes and gain new competencies is one of the most important determinants of their long-term success.  

Much has been made of the passages we all make in our personal lives. Starting with Erik Erikson's Eight Ages of Man and further popularized by Gail Sheehy’s Passages, the concept of requisite personal evolution is well documented. In the workplace, Lawrence Peter described the advancement of employees to their level of incompetence. Organizations, like people, experience similar passages and growth to levels that challenge their competence. The ability of leadership and management to adapt and evolve through these changes and gain new competencies is one of the most important determinants of their long-term success.  In the following pages, we analyze the evolutionary changes and systemic ramifications organizations experience, focusing on their adaptive ability with respect to leadership, management, and resources and the latter's impact on organizational performance and contextual failings. Equally important, we explore the issue of maladaption which, at its most extreme, can precipitate the end of the company or, less far-reaching, can catalyze a re-evaluation of a company's cultural capabilities leading to infrastructure re-engineering as well as a repositioning of its strategic initiatives. 
 

Passages Revisited

While for individuals the passages are defined by age and stage of life, the parallel for an organization is its level of revenue and organizational reach. Most of us view growth in predominantly positive ways. We even say that we will grow the economy or grow an organization in the same way that we grow a crop. We expect that with growth comes the harvest that for an organization is greater earnings and geometrically improved business opportunities. Likewise, those individuals responsible for organizational growth typically expect financial rewards, power, and prestige .

Rarely is growth discussed as one of the major risk factors an organization faces. As an organization grows, it goes through distinct phases that require different perspectives, characteristics, and skills from its team and different resource availability for high performance. All organizations are tested by their ability to improve their infrastructure to meet the expanded challenge. The leaders and managers of the organization face a similar challenge. The paradigm that made them successful in the early phases may not serve them as the organization grows and contextual realities change. Hands-on skills must be replaced with supervisory talents. Internal expertise must be replaced with the ability to create external linkages and opportunities.
 

Five Phases of Organizational Evolution

There are five distinct phases an organization (and its managers) must deal with as it moves through the evolutionary process. The first phase, the start-up phase, is characterized by entrepreneurship and innovation. The second phase starts when the organization becomes operational and continues through the period where the “family business” style of operations is functional. This is the period where a few highly motivated individuals perform a wide variety of functional roles. We call this the small business phase. From here, the organization develops the need for functional specialists which in turn requires the creation of teams and a leadership style that directs and motivates the team rather than having the leader serve as the principal hands-on, command and control decision-maker. We call this stage of growth the middle market phase. Finally, there is an evolution to a leadership business model where department managers possess the qualities of middle market practitioners on which the creative leader’s external focus leads to a strategic vision for driving the market and transforming the organization’s future

At any stage along the spectrum an organization may become maladaptive. Simply put, its inability to adapt in terms of leadership, management, and resources results in ineffective performance and contextual failings. This maladaption will either precipitate the end of the company or catalyze a re-evaluation of its cultural capabilities thus leading to both re-engineering of its infrastructure as well as a repositioning of its strategic initiatives.

Based on our reflective practitioner orientation, we have prepared a matrix (see Figure 1) that demonstrates these evolutionary changes and systemic ramifications.
 

Figure 1: Business Phase Matrix

The sections that follow will describe the process phases and the infrastructure enhancements required to meet the internal challenges and external opportunities of each developmental stage. Each section concludes with an analysis of the risks and options that typically arise at each stage and the impact of the infrastructure on the successful realization of the potential rewards.

START-UP PHASE

Brief Description
The typical start-up phase originates with a small group of founders who come together with an expertise and/or a vision to fill a business need in the local market. Usually the founders have been engaged as employees of another organization in the market area they intend to serve and believe they have found a better way to operate. The start-up phase is anchored in this conceptualization until the organization has achieved sustaining revenue.

Operating Functions

Leadership
The leader is an entrepreneurial risk taker. Driven more by reward and less by power, the start-up leader is willing to undertake the hands-on responsibilities necessary to assure success. This is the kind of person you will hear saying, “It is just easier to do it myself.” Start-up leaders excel at and enjoy hands-on production. The personal customer network of the leadership is critical. The leader may be formally designated or evolve informally among founding partners.

Management
Management is comprised of other co-founders who are willing to follow the vision of the leader. Many times the management group is made up of equal or close to equal owners who are organized informally. Since there is little compensation for anyone initially, direction is often negotiated rather than dictated. The founders are functional generalists doing whatever it takes to launch the entity.

Finance
There is typically limited capital. Funding is based on the personal investment of the principals. In the rare event that there is start-up capital it is used for the direct costs of the business plan. Cash flow survival is the daily battle.

Technology
IT is rudimentary at best unless it is a technology company. Computer networks are designed to share equipment if they exist. Technology is used principally for office applications, Internet research, and email communication.

HR
There is rarely an HR department or policies and procedures of consequence. Founders make the decisions regarding assignments, recruitment, and benefits.

Transition Functions

Transition Process
The organization grows to the next level based upon the vision of the leader/founders. The direction is opportunity-driven and growth occurs within the boundaries of the founders’ energy, willingness to sacrifice financially, and availability of opportunity. Since it is not planned growth, the opportunities will dictate direction, define the culture, and drive the business in ways that may be substantially different from the original vision.

Management Development
Management learns functional tasks experientially as they are presented. Typically responsibilities go to those who have the time or have the closest prior training. Training is for the task at hand not for future requirements.

Risks and Rewards
Most start-up operations live from day-to-day. This stage is almost exclusively a function of the founders, since the functional infrastructure has not been systematically developed.
Start-ups are dependent on self-starting multi-taskers to survive. Daily, the founders need to solve survival issues and be comfortable with the risks they are running. These characteristics allow them to turn quickly when opportunities arise thereby moving the organization in unenvisioned and unintended directions. Many times businesses are started by founders without the required strategic positioning skills. Perhaps they simply got tired of corporate bureaucracy and their success as a corporate manager was not translatable into entrepreneurial success. Alternatively, their personal risk profile may not allow them to stay the course. Regardless, the consequences of non-performance by the leader at this early stage are enormous.


SMALL BUSINESS PHASE

Brief Description
During the Small Business phase the organization continues to be dominated by the founder(s). Other management personnel, if not family, are typically implementers who perform cross-functional tasks under the control of the founder(s). This period continues until the size of the organization requires the development of functional specialization. Markets are usually local and systems remain primitive.
 

Operating Functions

Leadership
The leadership continues to require entrepreneurial skills and the organization will grow serendipitously driven by the opportunities and consequences of the leader’s decisions. The leader is expected to be the “rainmaker” and to deliver on opportunities with hands-on performance. Frequently the organization and the leader are synonymous in the customers’ eyes.

Management
The management group consists of the non-leader founders, family members, or a limited number of cross-functional implementers. Managers do what needs to be done usually on a time availability basis. This available time becomes stretched as growth occurs and the functional needs (accounting, HR, IT, marketing) increase. The entrepreneurial leader has no time for training and little interest in formal functional administration so the job of delivering on the opportunities the leader develops falls to the other managers.

Finance
Accounting usually remains more of a bookkeeping function and the tax return is usually the closest thing to financial statements. During this phase there is the beginning of payables, receivables, and inventory systems. Cash is usually scarce and a major job of the leader is to personally seek capital and credit. The need for financial reporting evolves with the strain on cash resources and with operations that have grown too large for the leader to control.

Technology
IT remains primarily an internal function with increased networking among employees. If not created during start-up, a web site will be required at this stage. There is usually little technological sophistication in the management group (unless it is an IT related company) and the limited advances have to compete for very scare financial resources.

HR
Now that everyone is getting paid there is a need for an internal or external payroll system and a benefits program for employees. Still principally run as a family type business, HR policies and procedures are limited. The organization is stretched in this area as it begins to hire more employees to meet growth without grounding the recruitment and retention needs in the basics of professional HR management.

Transition Functions

Transition Process
As in the start-up phase the transition to a middle market company occurs as a result of entrepreneurial growth. Without disciplined focus the growth will be opportunity driven and the demands on organizational resources will be unplanned and somewhat haphazard. This may lead to significant resource deployment in one functional area that is required for an opportunity and little in another that is not directly instrumental for that task.

Management Development
As described previously, a family atmosphere pervades and management development is strictly on-the-job training and personal mentoring. As the need for functional expansion increases it becomes clear that the limitations in training as well as the parochial experiences of management cannot be remedied with internal resources and ad hoc HR efforts.

Risks and Rewards
The stress of growth starts to become a major risk factor in this phase. This risk is juxtaposed to increased opportunity and profit potential as the local market for the goods or services is developed and repeat/referral business is generated. As this growth develops the need for functional expertise arises without the staff experience to meet it. The lack of financial, IT, and HR systems begins to hamper performance. With scare capital for the development of new opportunities comes the simultaneous need for systems and management. The entrepreneurial leader has become successful because of his/her external marketing experience and is usually resistant to infrastructure expenditures both in terms of time and resources. Lenders and investors require that their money will be used for business expansion not for managing existing opportunity. Many organizations fail to prosper in and grow through this level because of the leadership, management, and system improvements neglected during their growth. The solution requires an investment back into the business instead of realizing financial gain for the owners in tandem with a disciplined trade-off between marketing opportunities and the infrastructure needs of the organization.

MIDDLE MARKET PHASE

Description
This is most difficult management and functional transition an organization faces and few are able to make the transition successfully. While the start-up phase comes with enormous market acceptance risk, and the small business phase adds the stretching of internal systems and skills; the middle market phase simply cannot be successfully navigated without functional specialization, a significant change in leadership substance and style, enhanced clarification and operationalization of management skills and roles, and improved horizontal collaboration among functional departments.

Operating Functions

Leadership
Organizational leadership must make the transition from exclusive reliance upon entrepreneurship to effective team leadership, coupled with the strategic ability to spearhead growth in a focused, planned, and compatible way. The self-reliant and revenue dominated skills of the founding entrepreneurial leader becomes overwhelmed by the complexity, shear volume, and mass of an ever larger business and organizational structure. The leader must leave behind hands-on performance to direct team performance. She/he must also assess the needs of the organization holistically, using multi-faceted analysis to make the trade-offs necessary in this much more complex environment.

Management
As the leader has to depend upon the team for effective performance, the management team must become functionally specialized with senior level skills and perspectives in their assigned functional areas. No longer micromanaged, each manger must acquire the leadership skills to develop a functional team and direct performance to an organizational plan. This evolution in executive skills, team leadership, and shared accountability is the sine qua non for success in the middle market phase.

Finance
This stage requires new capital and/or debt, an upgrade in the accounting system, and management reporting to monitor performance. The need for expansion and improvement in all systems and the required enhancement in the quality and size of staff demand a significant investment in the infrastructure. Additionally, there must be new investment in plant and equipment. If the organization is expanding rapidly, there will be a buildup in current assets (receivables and inventory) with the concomitant strain on cash flow.

Technology
Technology plays a pivotal role as organizations reach middle market size. Communication between increasingly distant (physically and informationally) operations requires sophisticated networking, storage, and security. Operations require direct linkup with key customers and stakeholders. The organization goes from simple local IT to a comprehensive internal and external communication and operational system.

HR
The organization at this size requires a larger, more diverse workforce with more levels of responsibility and compensation. With this size there are increased workplace compliance and benefit requirements and employee recruitment /retention complexities. Formal policies and procedures are required legally and operationally. Internal training to better satisfy growth needs becomes a staffing necessity. The senior HR officer becomes the head of a group of HR professionals and an important member of the senior management team.

Transition Functions

Transition Process
Unlike the earlier transitions that were opportunity driven and leader generated, the transition from a middle market to a leadership company usually emanates from planned growth, multi-functional enhancements, and strategic projections. This transition requires that the organization become one of the premier performers in its market area gaining a competitive advantage from the coordinated fulfillment of the changes required in its middle market phase.

Management Development
As described in the operational areas, this is a time of enormous change in the scope and content of management responsibilities. For existing managers to make this transition requires formalized, internal and on-the-job training to assure uniformity and completeness of exposure to key concepts and skills. Many times it is more cost effective to send mangers to outside training by professionals within their functional areas. Unfortunately the required transition may not be achievable for some, necessitating the outside recruitment of new managers with the required skills and experience

Risks and Rewards
All of the described changes make this a phase of both management and capital risk for the organization. The size, shape, and makeup of the leader and management team must evolve and the capital must be raised and earnings re-invested to make the required infrastructure improvements. Without these changes the inadequate systems and inferior management of the organization will be overloaded with the resultant deterioration in operating and financial performance. If the required advances are accomplished in a continuous improvement process and coupled with a compatible financial structure, the platform will be established for market leadership, improved performance, and strategic growth.


LEADERSHIP BUSINESS

Brief Description
Having created the platform in the middle market phase, the organization becomes positioned for strategic growth. Driven by its operations, it develops industry leadership as it expands into a national or international force. With its size comes increasing access to investor capital and bank financing. The organization may decide to go public to access funding in larger amounts. This size and reach requires organizational maturity in all areas. Organizational capabilities with respect to business development, management recruitment, and system development reach their peak.

Operating Functions

Leadership
The leader of a leadership business commands industry respect for expertise, vision, and insight. While she/he leads the strategic plan and guides the senior management team, most of the leader’s focus is external, opening new markets and arranging strategic operational, financial, and business development relationships. The effective leader will perform the increasingly visible role of spokesperson for the organization and its industry.

Management
There are now multiple layers to the organization. Even with the trend toward flatter organizations, the requirements of companies this size necessitate functional and sub-functional specialization. Leadership and supervisory skills must be developed at lower, in-the-trenches levels of the organization. The senior management team becomes the key operational force for meeting planned growth and performance objectives. Managers play a key ongoing role in the recruitment and development of the next generation of managers/leaders.

Finance
This is increasingly the stage of corporate finance with major debt and equity relationships. Usually these relationships and the complexity of the organization necessitate audited financial statements and comprehensive management reporting. The ability to manage effectively is guided by the company’s ability to create a dynamic strategic plan, implement it with effective annual budgeting, and monitor and adapt it with strategically oriented management reporting.

Technology
IT is the key to comprehensive internal and external communication. The wider the scope of operations, functionally and geographically, the more IT becomes essential to producing uniform levels of performance. It is pivotal in assuring that key personnel have the timely information required to perform their responsibilities. Linking customers to the company technologically permits a timeliness of service delivery that rivals smaller local companies. Training can be performed at a variety of locations simultaneously to provide the maximum synergy and uniformity of delivery. Website and Internet communication become critical faces of the organization to the world.

HR
The growth of the organization requires the continuous upgrading, expansion, and diversification of its workforce. In HR terms this means major recruitment initiatives, formalized training, and systematic retention programs. Geographic dispersion increases the complexity for compliance with state and local laws and customs. The qualities of organizational opportunity, compensation, benefits, training, and team orientation become critical components for maintaining quality performance in a larger more dispersed environment.

Transition Functions

Transition Process
Successful growth in this size organization requires comprehensive planning, maintenance of organizational focus/discipline, and the ability to adapt a large institution to changing environmental factors. Transitioning to regional, national, and international market leadership requires visibility, development of new markets for products/services, continuous expansion of quality management, investment in and development of enhanced systems, and universal commitment to high performance objectives.

Management Development
As described above, the management group expands both vertically and horizontally. This requires a commitment to internal development programs, external training, and retention/recruitment efforts. It is central to a leadership company’s success that the quality, style, and focus on team objectives for the group be maintained. Ideally, the increased size produces enhanced ways to serve; and the key to this scope of service lies in the dedication of the management group to core organizational values.

Risks and Rewards
This period has less financial risk and more operational, leadership, and management risk. Not that leadership companies cannot experience financial problems, just that there are usually greater resources to combat them. The principal risk is in leadership and management reaching levels beyond which their competence is tested. The challenge confronted by all leadership groups is to develop the management capability to consistently adapt and reinvent themselves to prosper in more diverse and complex business environments. If the organization succeeds in its adaptation, the rewards at hand are empowered by the widest array of business opportunities, resource capacity, and comparative/competitive advantage.

MALADAPTIVE BUSINESS

Brief Description
An organization that is unable to make the leadership, management, and/or functional improvements required for their stage of development will exhibit distressed symptoms which if not addressed can lead to business failure. The characteristics of the shortcomings depend upon the growth stage of the organization.

Operating Functions

Leadership
In the early entrepreneurial phases many organizations fail because the vision, contacts, negotiating, and technical skills of the founder(s) are not able to get the company to a sustaining level. Many times a leader who was successful in organizational life is unable to make the adjustments needed in a work environment without the infrastructure of the larger organization where his/her experience was gained. Conversely, it is very difficult for the successful entrepreneur to make the adjustment required to lead a larger company where the ability to attract, direct, and motivate a team supplants the hands-on production of earlier phases.

Management
Early in the process many organizations fail because of a leadership struggle among the founders. The risk-taking entrepreneurship of early joiners/founders is incompatible with the need for unity and the need for managers satisfied with implementation roles. As the organization grows it will demand functional expertise and team leadership skills not required previously and perhaps out of reach for the founders who have not spent careers in these functional specialties. Frequently this requires turnover that is particularly difficult to execute with loyal followers who have lived through the trials of the start-up phases.

Finance
During the entrepreneurial phases the financial focus is on survival issue, such as, cash flow, collection of receivables, and the adequacy of cash for business opportunity investment. Much has been written of start-ups and financial distress. This article is aimed at a more insidious financial risk, which is not investing in the infrastructure required for growth. Departmentally, this results in inadequate financial systems to assure timely payments and receipts, as well as inadequate financial reporting to stakeholders and management. The lack of investment in other areas is discussed below

Technology
Deficiencies in technology are rarely the source of business failures (except in technology companies), but with the communication needs of the fast paced business environment of recent years, it is a significant element of organizational growth and performance. Inadequate IT systems can impede business opportunity, restrict operations, retard the teamwork between functions and locations, and present a damaging picture to external stakeholders.

HR
A key component of organizational development is movement from the singular focus on business development toward building a management team and support staff with the skills and motivation to lift the company to the next level. We have seen many organizations that have the office manager serve as the personnel manager until significant problems materialize such as high turnover, employee litigation, or an unproductive corporate culture. All successful organizations understand the symbiotic relationship between success and their people. Often overlooked is investment in teams that are necessary for meeting the extraordinary demands of growth.

Transition Functions

Transition Process
The transition process from a maladaptive to an adaptive growth phase requires the deployment of the resources necessary to build the required platform, even if this may mean electing to forgo an opportunity that is outside the current capabilities of a company. It makes the leadership and management job in a high performance organization more complex since they must balance the needs of the organization between external growth and the internal development of the required corporate resources. Correcting maladaption will only occur when there is compatibility between growth and infrastructure trade-offs.

Management Development
Clearly the development of the management team is the key element that must be coordinated with growth, leadership, and functional expertise. Although risk should be viewed as a continuum and not at discrete points in the growth process, there are two phases that have the most substantial risk. The first is the entrepreneurial phase and the suitability of the team for this environment; the ability of the founders to coalesce around a leader and for the other founders to play the implementer support roles. Leadership and power struggles among the founders frequently are the source of start-up distress. Second, and just as difficult, is the movement from a leader performance environment to team performance phases that as discussed earlier require a very different set of management skills. These skills have to be developed through internal or external training, development, or education. If the leader and managers cannot or will not make the transitions they must be replaced in order for the organization to avoid the consequences of maladaption

Risks and Rewards
Clearly maladaption has serious consequences and correcting the incompatibility between the infrastructure platform and organizational growth has the potential for enormous rewards. It is at the heart of effective leadership and management.


Conclusion

Businesses today operate in an environment of short-term focus, demand for annual profitability increases, free cash flows, flat organizational structures, and stringent operating ratios. Buoyed by the excesses of the 1980’s and then the collapse of the technology sector combined with the corporate excesses of Enron, Tyco, World Com, and others, an era of cost cutting and cash flow focus has arisen. The quick way to make an impression on your banker, investor group, and even on your employees is to cut expenses and improve the current operating margin.

Anyone who has tried to raise capital or arrange corporate debt has heard the message loud and clear. What will be my first year return on investment? How soon can you pay back the debt? What revenue stream will this generate? Driven by this thinking, organizations have accentuated rapid growth, high returns to investors, and accelerated payback for lenders. This philosophy is running into the reality that for an organization to sustain growth and realize its long term potential it must invest in its infrastructure.

Much has been made of the leadership compensation packages that reward current year earnings results and stock market appreciation. Stocks rise on revenue projections then when trouble comes the analysts focus on free cash flow. A CEO who is focused on long term profitability and building a market-dominant company will probably not last to see it realized. Knowing that a successful transition through the growth phases requires significant investment in infrastructure and that this investment is contrary to the financial culture of the times, further encourages current CEOs to drive their short term earnings, realize significant compensation, and then get out before the inevitable implosion occurs.

The pressures are somewhat different in companies that remain private. It is usually not possible to grow a company to a leadership position without institutional debt and equity. As a consequence private companies face the same pressures. Also, for the founders who have sacrificed financially, worked under start-up stress, and risked their futures, it is very difficult to deny lucrative returns when profitability arrives. They have already made a serious trade-off between current and future lifestyles but now with funds available it seems justified to cash out rather than reinvest.

For all of these aforementioned reasons we are operating in an era where financial sacrifice, mid-long term vision, and investing in the future are hard to come by. Unfortunately, this is precisely what is required for a company to evolve into a leadership position and prosper over time. Over and over again we have seen situations where companies make a good start and fail as they grow; growth by itself many times was the source of their demise. The problem was that they were not strategic about their growth. They did not balance their short and long term needs. In essence, the organization was not positioned to absorb growth profitably.

For now, leaders must do their best to invest sufficiently in infrastructure to empower future growth. Some have chosen to use the “big bath theory,” making expenditures in short bursts in order to minimize the impact on operations for the other periods. Others have chosen a modest reduction in operating margins and lower capital returns as the path. Either way, without this article’s focus, the banks and investors will get their return (at least the first ones in) while the principals, employees, customers, suppliers, and others with a longer- term interest will suffer the dire consequences.

Growth for the sake of growth is the etiology of the cancer cell with the resultant disability and death. The only kind of growth that makes sense individually and organizationally is quality growth based on conscious choices in a framework of strategic projection. Whether it be passages in an individual’s transition from stage to stage or an organization’s transition from phase to phase, contextual realities, resource capabilities, and visionary goals must temper the timing, speed, and direction of the growth process.

The triggering of the creative capabilities of executives, managers, consultants, business school faculties, and public administrators is the critical anodyne at this historical crossroads regarding the future of business organizations in this period of accelerated change processes. Taking the leadership to shape a manageable context that will ensure high performance and a profitable environment internally and externally is one of the ultimate challenges facing organizational leaders as they accelerate into the future. This paradigmatic transformation must be confronted with gusto and courage since it will set the strategic boundary-expanding framework for organizations through phases in the areas of leadership, management, finance, technology, and human resources. To blend external demands for growth with the constant development of internal infrastructure capabilities required to support profitable growth becomes the essential equation for success, as we clarify operational guidelines and boundary shifts of living and performing in the technological age.
 

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