Growing and Scaling Startups: things that go wrong along the way.

Back in the '70s, Larry E. Greiner, a USC Marshall School of Business professor, came up with the Greiner Growth Model (or Griener Curve) that describes the six phases that organizations go through as they mature. In short, the six stages are:

➡ Phase 1: Creativity: as the org changes from lots of discussion and mutual information to being overloaded, there will be a crisis of leadership.

➡ Phase 2: Direction: decision makers become overloaded with needing to control (and the lack of self-control of employees), they will encounter a crisis of autonomy.

➡ Phase 3: Delegation: as the organization develops layers and sub-groups, they will encounter a crisis of control.

➡ Phase 4: Coordination & Monitoring: as the organization grows and complexity, bureaucracy and other barriers kick in, they will encounter a crisis of red tape.

➡ Phase 5 Collaboration: maturing organizations, matrix structures, systems, and financial rewards, cause a crisis of growth.

➡ Phase 6: Alliances (extra-organizational solutions) : as organizations grow through mergers, partnerships, outsourcing and other network/external companies, they will encounter a crisis of identity.

These growth phases may vary in duration, and may not happen in this exact order, depending on the specifics of the business or its market it is operating in.

👉 Net Out: hashtag#Investors and hashtag#founders need to pay attention to these stages of a companies growth and scaling, and how it affects the hashtag#culture of the hashtag#organization, and hence the performance of the company.