After survival, what next?
Businesses that survive the first two years usually do so in a fairly healthy state. Probably, they have survived because they have built up a good customer base, are adequately funded and have a strong management team. Now, in order to enable continued growth, it is time to look at the company itself and consider how it needs to be expanded.
The form that a company takes will to a very great extent depend on the goals of the business. This is a good time for the founder entrepreneurs to sit down and consider explicitly what those goals are.
The first objective, survival, has been met. What happens next? It is important that the entrepreneurs consider their personal objectives, thinking again about their motives for setting up the company and what they want to achieve.
Do they plan to float the company on the stock exchange or do they wish to keep it private? Do they wish to continue to be closely involved in the management of the business or do they want to devolve day-to-day responsibility to others? These things can affect the business, often more than is realised.
There are a number of different forms that a company can take. Managers may be tempted to try one of the “new” forms of organisation, such as network organisation or matrix organisation, but these can be difficult and costly to implement.
When they work, they work very well and yield great rewards in terms of innovation, teamwork and productivity but they are not going to be suitable inevery case.
Ultimately, the company needs to find what theorists call the “requisite organisation”, that is the organisational form best suited to its needs. The right form of organisation is the one that will help the company achieve its goals most efficiently, regardless of how “new” or innovative the organisational form is. There are also different approaches to the question of expansion. Some prefer to keep companies as lean as possible, expanding only when market pressures grow too great. This creates organisational stretch, which can lead to efficiencies, but care must be taken lest the market expands too rapidly and the company can no longer keep up.
An alternative is to expand the organisation first to create capacity and then bet that the marketing department can increase the market quickly before the additional costs start to bite into profitability. In fact, most companies try for a middle way, trying to time expansion to coincide with market growth. They do not always get it right.
However quickly the company expands and whatever new form it takes, expansion inevitably means a change in culture. Gone are the days when everyone was in the same office and all worked together to get the job done. Expansion means formality, with defined job titles and tasks and firmly defined lines of responsibility and reporting. This does not mean that the company has to become stuffy and bureaucratic. What it must become is professional, with people taking responsibility for their own work and trusting others to take responsibility for theirs.
No one feels this cultural change more than the entrepreneurs who founded the business. Once it was entirely their own and they could shape it and mould it as they wished.
With the beginning of growth, the enterprise starts to take on a life of its own, its culture and values begin to define themselves. Power begins to be devolved to other members of the management team and to other employees down the line. The entrepreneurs influence how all these things happen, but increasingly their direct control begins to erode. The business is now becoming a dynamic entity, with the power to evolve and grow.
企业生命周期系列: 企业活下来之后
能够活过头两年的企业，通常健康状态相当不错。它们之所以能生存下来，有可能是因为它们已建立了一个良好的客户基础，有充裕的资金，并且有一支强有力的管理团队。现在，为了实现持续增长，该是好好考察公司自身、考虑需要如何扩张的时候了。在这方面，公司所采取的做法在很大程度上取决于其业务目标。对于创业企业家来说，现在时机不错，可以坐下来仔细考虑，那些目标究竟是什么。第一个目标是生存，这个目标已经达到了。那么接下来呢？企业家应该考虑一下他们的个人目标，再想想他们开办公司的动机，以及希望取得的成就，这很重要。他们是否计划让公司在股票交易所上市？还是希望维持公司的私有性质？他们是希望继续高度参与企业管理，还是希望将日常职责转交给他人？这些事情很可能会影响企业的发展，而且影响程度通常比人们意识到的要大。
一家公司可以采取的架构有多种不同的形式。经理们也许会对尝试某种“新潮”的组织结构感兴趣，比如网络组织或矩阵组织等，但这些实施起来可能很难，而且代价高昂。一旦这些组织形式发挥作用，它们会运作得很好，并在创新、团队协作和生产率等方面产生极高的回报。但是，它们并不适用于所有情况。最终，公司需要找到理论家们所说的“必备组织”(requisite organization)，即最适合公司需求的组织形式。一个合适的组织形式应当能帮助企业最有效地达到目标，而不管它是如何“新潮”或有创意。解决扩张问题也有很多办法。有些人喜欢让公司尽可能保持精简，只有在市场压力实在太大时才进行扩张。这会让组织消耗过度，虽能带来效率，但必须小心使用，以免市场扩张太快，公司再也无法跟上。另一个选择是先把组织扩大，以提升其能力，然后等着在额外成本开始吞噬盈利之前，市场部门能够迅速扩大市场。
实际上，大多数公司会尝试一个折衷的方法，努力使扩张时机与市场增长的时机保持同步，但它们并非总能做得恰倒好处。无论公司扩张有多快，无论采用何种新的形式，扩张都不可避免地意味着公司文化的改变。所有人在同一个办公室中，为完成任务一起工作的日子一去不复返了。扩张意味着要有规矩，要有明确的职位头衔和工作分派，以及职责和汇报上的严格界定。这并不是说，企业一定要变得僵化而官僚。但企业必须变得专业，人们要为自己的工作承担责任，并相信其他人也会为他们各自的工作负责。对这种文化上的改变体会最深的，莫过于创立该企业的企业家了。过去，整个企业都是他们的，他们可以按照自己的意愿去塑造它。随着企业开始成长，它开始了自己的生命历程，它的文化和价值观也开始成形。权力开始被移交到管理团队其他成员以及下级员工的手中。创业者能影响这些事情的发生方式，但他们的直接控制力开始日益减弱。企业现在变成了一个有生命力的实体，具备了进化和成长的力量。
