A journey from entrepreneurship (the very first inspiration of starting off) to an established company involves a lot of transitions. I intend to summarize these differences in the blog. Put on a spectrum of growth stage, I could identify three distinct stages in this progression:
- The pure start-up stage
- The small group growth stage
- The Established stage
The Start-up Stage: I might not be aligning to the text books definition, but for the sake of distinction, I highlight this aspect separately. As Entrepreneurs begin setting up their ventures, the whole idea begins to manifest itself in his mind; he starts off on his journey. There is not process, to guide, no one to monitor. There is a lot of multi-tasking by the entrepreneur; he attempts all possible tact to attract business for himself. Though highly flexible on the ideas and their stratergization front, there is a limited flexibility in the number of operations that could be taken up. There is absolutely no scope for politics since there is only a single person in the show.
The Growth Stage: As this single entrepreneur progresses with building a team, the locus of business shifts from the entrepreneur to this group, his first team members. The idea is communicated to this team, and delegation increases. Processes and Strategies for a smooth communication amongst the group begin to take shape. It is the group in motion and not the entrepreneur alone. The entrepreneur having delegated some of his task might begin focusing on the activity him /her finds most best done by him. The team is bound by a personal touch - the founder communicates with his team directly. As the team grew, it granted the organization higher operational flexibility and the strategies to achieve the ideas are discussed with group and hence flexible. Politics - the power battle begins to creep in, but there is no scope for explicit expression of such a feeling.
Established company Stage: The venture creates a name for itself, the team size grows. The entrepreneur’s ideas are now in the product form in the market. Structure and systems have evolved based on the policies that were set up and evolved through the growth stage - hierarchies, communication processes, are all predefined. The top management would deal with the decision making and it’s through the process of communication that efficiencies are attempted. The founder would move away from the new recruits as various layers are added. As the size of the company increased the flexibility which was hall mark of the earlier two stages takes a beating and in fact is lost completely. Politics begin to play a heavier role.
Management Study groups these growth related challenged into a study stream called- Organization Development
Read in Kannada:http://somanagement.blogspot.com/2011/03/blog-post_14.html
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