The goal for small businesses in Stage 2 is to ensure the organization has balance across leadership traits and can make appropriate use of them, as called for in the variety of business situations a larger company finds itself in.
Two major changes for a Stage 2 leader:How you operateWhat you do relative to the rest of the organizationNeed to write your job description
Stage 0: Which strengths are most useful to drive your business opportunities?Refer to book “Discover Your Strengths”Limited number in which any one person truly excelsStage 1: How do you expand your impact through other people?Stage 2: You’re strengths are no longer adequate to serve expanded business needs. Without losing the ability to capitalize on what you’re good at, your job becomes identifying and filling the gaps where you don’t excel – the opposite of what you were doing in Stage 0 / 1
Perth Leadership Institute: Executive Outcome AssessmentMeasures leadership traits in 8 dimensionsPerformance and success comes from improving your organization’s capabilities in the quadrant opposite of your strongest trait
Goal in Stage 1 is to leverage your strengths as much as possibleGoal in Stage 2 is to ensure the organization has balance across leadership traits and can make appropriate use of them as called for in the variety of business situations a larger company finds itself
Your job in Stage 2 is to become the “multi-bodied” leader – to expand your impact beyond the things in which you excel by surrounding yourself with people who are good at those things and represent your interests even better than you wouldNeed to let the other bodies do things their way and learn to understand when to trust their instincts instead of your own
This is the general job description for a Stage 2 leaderThree areas of focus: providing direction, management, ownership / stakeholdersDirection: making sure there is a motivating picture of the future, that people are focused on the right issues, and that they are defining the issues the right wayManagement: making sure that performance is managed effectively (often by others), building out and ensuring the capabilities of your management team, making sure the organization has an effective culture (again, often implemented by others), making sure that the company uses effective communication and decision-making processesOwnership / Stakeholders: managing the companies relationship with any outside owners and other key stakeholders, and making sure the company has an appropriate and effective governance processSome of these things come naturally and you’re already doing, some you aren’t doing or are doing reactively. Need to be aware of the latter, and regularly examine whether it’s necessary or beneficial to focus on them more proactively or add them to your regular set of responsibilities.
Phimation Strategy Group is a management consulting firm based in Ann Arbor, Mich., with an emphasis on the challenges facing Stage 2 companies – those who have achieved a level of success and sustainability and are stagnating or working to grow.Phimation gets its name from a natural force that works to derive elegant functionality from discordant clutter. From nautilus shells to DNA, the ratio phi shows up again and again in the natural world, providing the balance of creativity and structure that complex systems need to sustain themselves and grow. Phimation offers a range of products and services – including seminars, coaching programs and consulting – that help Stage 2 businesses understand their unique issues and achieve tangible results. The Phimation team uses strategic insight, client-focused processes and leading management practices to help its clients transition from entrepreneurship to enterprise. The company also offers The Stage 2 Owner’s Manual, which captures its deep experience with the challenges facing Stage 2 businesses and provides practical guidance and tools that business leaders can use to address those issues in their own companies.It all comes down to this: Many Stage 2 companies reach a point of sustainability, but they typically struggle with growth and long-term success. It takes strategic business evolution, or in other words, phimation, for a Stage 2 company to become sustainably successful.