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