In order for growing midsized companies to avoid a customer experience meltdown, their leadership must plan and build leadership infrastructure. Without leadership infrastructure, growing companies can be victimized by their own success.
I was recently interviewed by John Mattone as part of their “Expert Interview” program. Click here to read this interview on Developing a Leadership Infrastructure, and let me know what you think! As always, we’re working to get the information out to make your midsized businesses mightier!
Building leadership teams is most successful as a team sport. High-performance leadership teams don’t necessarily materialize after highly talented executives are recruited, and they don’t necessarily evolve as team members get to know one another. Instead, a great top team is designed, recruited, fine-tuned and upgraded.
Want to Upgrade Your Business? Upgrade Your Leadership Team!
A maturing industry requires its leaders to act differently. As industry players grow larger to manage compliance burdens and to gain access to capital, leadership styles that worked in the past can become dysfunctional.
Many closely held companies don’t have a functioning board at all. Investor-backed private companies usually have boards, but many are dysfunctional, neither helping management perform at higher levels nor managing risk.
Some companies overdose on meetings, others fail to communicate enough to accomplish crucial projects. But nearly all employees and leaders in midsized companies feel they can do better at internal communications.
October 4, 2013. Stanford, CA. Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
Successful entrepreneurs either see opportunities others don’t see or are faster to seize those that others have recognized. They use the bureaucracy of the big firms against them. But at some point, the fast-growing startup must grow up —
How big can a firm grow without leadership infrastructure? When is the right time to move past free-form entrepreneurialism?
This business grew to $100 million revenues in 12 years without a business plan, without a budget, and without many meetings. Hard to believe, but true. Yet now they are changing their approach because they can feel themselves losing control.
Growing companies can be victims of their own success. When they get the growth they so desperately seek, they may just as quickly outgrow their leadership infrastructure, rendering the business chaotic and inefficient.
Robert Sher is founding principal of CEO to CEO, a consulting firm of former chief executives that improves the leadership infrastructure of midsized companies seeking to accelerate their performance. He was chief executive of Bentley Publishing Group from 1984 to 2006 and steered the firm to become a leading player in its industry (decorative art publishing).