Leading at the Speed of Growth

1. Leading at the Speed of Growth Rapid Growth, Avimanyu (Avi) Datta Doctoral Candidate, College of Business Washington State University,

2. Rapid Growth Reinventions in the company. Successful firms reinvent themselves. Eg. IBM, HP, starbucks, Amazon, Intel, Apple Complex organization Alliances, mergers, IPO Continuous Growth Widespread acceptance of its products Gain Significant share in its market Try to be a market leader New Hires challenge in integrating them Rapid Growth Sales Driven New or different Product launch to capture market Fast faced, flexible, chaotic and Aggressive Initial Growth Figuring out what products or Services to offer Startup

3. Company Goal • Gain Significant market share as products become widely used. • Becomes essential once products become diffused and competitors enter • Become a market leader to ward off competition • Control supply chains • Build infrastructure and management to support aggressive growth • Plan for capacity, manufacturing to meet demands • Hire and integrate a lot of people • Share homogenous value with heterogeneous skills

4. Company Characteristics • More demanding customers • Tension between need to build fast and need to move build structure, plans and systems • Staff and management go quickly and become more diverse • Business is market focused

5. Company Characteristics…Contd. • Planning begins and people work to plan • Operations start to be standardized and streamlined • Expectations of the company from all constituencies are high • The fast pace is extreme

6. Red flags • Feel Pressure to fill voids in company’s functional expertise • See the need to build your management team’s ability to streamline and coordinate their functions and work together as a team to plan for the future.

7. Red flags • Always feel behind the curve • Best way to fund growth is unclear • Some employees cannot keep pace with growing responsibilities

8. Dangers if you don’t change • Functional Silos, Office politics and even infighting will develop • People will complain • Too many priorities • Spending all the time fighting fires • Loose touch with vision • Lack of structure and process will create delays • People will not feel empowered • Decline

9. Key Leadership roles Rapid Growth Lead the Market Team Builder/ Coach / planner/ Communicator Turbulence Initial Growth Drive Sales Delegator/ Direction setter Develop product Startup Doer/ Decision Maker

10. Critical Responsibilities • Hire people who are smarter than you to fill gaps in functional expertise • Define new roles/ responsibilities and goal for management team. • Set goals together that foster cooperation and synergy • Assign responsibilities and authority to make specific types if decision • Lead team in creating a strategic market-focused vision and plan for growth and in following it

11. Critical Responsibilities • Lead team in creating a strategic market-focused vision and plan for growth and in following it • Capitalizing on market opportunities • Ensuring position and brand awareness that gives your company competitive advantages • Managing sales distribution and internal operations • Fostering continual innovation in products and services

12. Critical Responsibilities…contd. • Create processes to continually align employees- especially the management team with company’s vision • Drive a communication processes including being a champion for market and customer information. • Consider views from all constituencies

13. Changes to make your leadership role • Use the company’s plan to focus and track its effort • Shift your focus from doing work to managing and coaching • Strop being the ultimate decision maker: develop a consensus-oriented decision style. • Encourage healthy debate for criticisms. • Don’t have to answer all ideas, rely on your teams. • Balance time between the big picture and the daily operations.

14. Questions/ Comments