The Five Phases of Growth

Here are the five phases of growth as outlined by The Successful Entrepreneur's Guidebook.

1. Growth Through Creativity

The initial start up of the business is fueled by the founder's initial idea. If the idea has sufficient demand, i.e there is a large enough gap in the market or it beats its competitors then the business will grow. Of course as it grows, the organizational structure becomes more complex and thus requires leadership.

2. Growth Through Direction

Once the business is established then it requires a strong leader to make tough decisions about the company's priorities. A leader must be found in order to carry out phase three.

3. Growth Through Delegation

Once there is a strong leader and the company is moving in a steady and strong direction, there will come a point where to ensure efficient work, responsibility will have to be delegated to more people in the company. For the business that has trouble moving forward the issues usually lie with the leader's lack of trust and confidence in his employes which result in less delegation and the leader being ineffective at handling work that would be performed better by a larger group.

4. Growth Through Coordination

With the roles of the business delegated the business puts in place strategic planning to ensure accountability throughout the hierarchy. Various systems and policies are developed to regulate the actions of managers at all levels and communication all throughout the business is vital.

5. Growth Through Collaboration

Finally if possible where there are production lines, create teams. This results in a groups of people being responsible for the whole major portion of a task as opposed to having individuals responsible for small and seemingly meaningless stages of the process. People are now naturally encouraged to generate solutions rather than passing problems down the line.