Scale Architects
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Your business culture isn't a fixed set of values you scribbled with your mission statement on a napkin one night. Instead, it is a dynamic set of hierarchical values that can and should change in response to the business' growth and development.
The culture that has given you so much success and brought you so far will, at some point, prevent you from taking your company to the next level. There is an interesting pattern that happens in virtually every successful startup, regardless of their industry.
Every successful company's true values are almost virtually identical. These shared values actually define employee behavior and have more to do with their stage of development than they do their unique identity and how this is ok.
As a founder, your leadership must evolve from being the one to effectively decide and do everything to creating a company that can effectively decide and do everything. One of the skills you must master along the way is leading by question.
Unfortunately for every business, there will come a day when it is no more. This is the unfortunate reality of the final stage of the Predictable Success lifecycle, Death Rattle. There is a greater question here: why is it so hard to stay successful?
Big Rut is the second to last stage in the Predictable Success lifecycle. While the Big Rut doesn't sound like something any of us want to put our business in, there are many once-great businesses, organizations, and institutions that have done precisely that.
The problem of Treadmill is the business has begun to lose or even suppress the visionary risk-taking that brought it this far. It is often so subtle that most within the organization don't even notice, and those outside of the organization (especially stockholders) will likely be happier than ever. What no one realizes is that the fate of the entire organization is decided in Treadmill.
Predictable Success is where you, as the leader, can put your foot on the gas pedal, and the whole organization moves forward. You found the tools, made the necessary changes, and in Predictable Success, you reap the rewards. You can keep your business in Predictable Success for the long-haul using these four key strategies!
Why is second stage growth so hard for businesses to achieve? They take off like a rocket, grow like crazy, and steal business from bigger competitors every step of the way. Then all of a sudden, they find the growth slowing, profitability slipping, and people in the company fighting with each other, and they just can't seem to get ahead of it.If this sounds familiar, welcome to Whitewater.
The second stage in the Predictable Success Lifecycle is Fun. It's an incredible time for the business. During this time, businesses often achieve double-digit and triple-digit annual growth as they break free from gravity and rocket out of Early Struggle. Here's how to make the most of it!
Do you ever just wish you could see around the "next corner" for your business? Have you ever been blindsided by a major challenge that seemed to come out of nowhere? But in hindsight, you realized it had been brewing for a long, long time; you just didn't see it coming.
None of us are asking the right question. Our natural leadership style biases our thinking to one of these four questions: Why? What? How? and Who? It’s a classic case of, to a hammer, everything is a nail. But we all know you can’t build an entire house with only a hammer (at least not a house most of us would want to live in). So in this article we’ll pull all four together with the one most important question almost no one is asking.
