Organizational Growth Phases
Organizational growth can be divided into five separate phases or stages. They are:
- The phase of conception
- The phase of beginning/startup
- The phase of growth and stability
- The phase of maturity
- The phase of decreasing
Businesses change as they expand in terms of their operations, structures, and processes. They need some fresh approaches to management, leadership, and communication. The mindset and skills of a manager are crucial predictors of a company's future development and success, claim Quinn et al. (2014). It implies that a manager's abilities, capabilities, experiences, and characteristics matter. However, a company can proceed through all stages of growth thanks to a few highlighted characteristics of a wonderful management.
Key Characteristics of an Effective Manager
The key characteristics of an effective manager competent manager. In a practical setting, creativity separates competence from excellence. Innovative and creative minds, stimulate projects that attract customers' attention (Quinn et al.,2014). The two aspects are the ingredients that pull different pieces and ideas together into a cohesive whole and active business venture. The attributes are relevant in the conception stage and before the declining phase, where firms need to come up with new business ideas or innovate from the existing one to avoid failure.
Direction and delegation are the other qualities of a perfect leader. A directive person can direct tasks and responsibilities to certain people. Directing is the act of managing, governing, and superintendence. On the other hand, delegation is the act of assigning various roles to different stakeholders in an organization. As an enterprise expands (in growth and expansion phase), multiple departments emerge and operations increases, which means, managers may not perform all the activities entitled to them (Bianchi, 2016). They have to give directives and orders, to specific individuals who have the skills and the experience to conduct those tasks.
Knowledge and Intuition
The third set of characteristics is knowledge and intuition. Intuition means, the ability to know some things without necessarily using a rational process (Quinn et al.,2014). It is the crucial aspect of emotional intelligence used by successful managers. Apparently, those individuals who have keen insight can quickly identify/sense what others feel, think, and perceive. Again, adequate knowledge is a vital management attribute that every leader/manager needs to possess. As a firm expands, many activities need to be conducted; therefore, with integrated and ingrained knowledge, a manager has a basis of being transparent, focus on the employees, and knows the activities which are essential for business success.
Commitment
Commitment is also an essential characteristic of a successful manager. According to Bianchi (2016), during the conception or start-up phase, every manager is committed to seeing the success of the firm's project together with that of all the team members. Perfect managers pull their team forward during the hard or tough times; for example, during the expansion/growth phase, there are many activities that need concentration and be addressed. Sometimes, the organization may not have the ability to secure enough staffs. A committed leader will get the appropriate way to deal with such situations.
Coordination and Collaboration
Finally, coordination and collaboration are vital management attributes. As stated by Quinn et al. (2014), in an organization setting, tasks and projects get coordinated between all the departments and parts of the company to make them tuned to each other. Coordination is a distinctive aspect that assists a manager in organizing different elements of a complex structure like a growing firm to enable them to work together. The character goes hand in hand with co-operation, where various parts of the organization need to be organized to work together in whatever the situation. Managers who possess or acquire the discussed skills can manage organizational growth and ensure the going concern of an enterprise.
References
Bianchi, C. (2016). Managing Organizational Growth and Dynamic Complexity. IN DYNAMIC PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT (pp. 1-50). Springer International Publishing.
Quinn, R. E., Bright, D., Faerman, S. R., Thompson, M. P., & McGrath, M. R. (2014). BECOMING A MASTER MANAGER: A COMPETING VALUES APPROACH. John Wiley & Sons.
