Stages of Company Growth With James Fischer

By Colin Sheehan, RCS Reporter. 

Tap into a deeper insight on your organization and gain the clarity you need to be an effective leader in navigating business growth.  

James Fischer is a successful entrepreneur, consultant, educator, author and speaker. He is the co-founder of the Origin Institute which has conducted research on more than 700 companies and has breakthrough knowledge that will change how you understand business growth. James Fischer’s approach to company growth is not mechanistic, but integrated, which allows business owners to look deeper into their organization and realize the complexities that effect a company’s ability to grow. His book, Navigating the Growth Curve is available on Amazon and provides entrepreneurs and business owners with the perspective they need to lead their organizations through change. 

In this episode of Les's Corner, Les Burch and James Fischer discuss the stages of growth in a company and how contractors can successfully maneuver through these stages. Most people assume business growth is directly measured by the dollar volume which, as James and Les prove, is an incorrect assumption. 

“What I’ve found over many years of research and working with hundreds of companies is that to understand growth at a DNA level, you have to understand what makes the company complex as it grows,” said James. "The unit of complexity in any organization, it doesn’t matter what industry it’s in, is a single human being.”  

As more people are added to an organization it becomes more complex. As an organization becomes more complex the rules of management change. This is why James identifies the stages of company growth by the number of people in the organization, not the type of organization or the profit. Regardless of what products or services a business provides, James has found the same patterns in every company and confidently marks growth stages by the number of people in a business. 

“As you grow the organization, each person you bring onto your company has a suitcase in their left hand with all their great things that are happening with them [and] in the right hand they’re carrying a suitcase of stuff that may be stressing them out,” said James. "When you start having people come together, each one carrying their own suitcases, they start bumping into each other. So, you’re managing that complexity." 

The tipping point between each stage happens when the stage meets it’s “critical mass” or when a stage-one company of one to 10 employees becomes a stage-two company as that 11th person joins the team. When you hit that critical mass, the rules of managing the business change as well as the company itself. 

“What happens with a lot of companies and human groups, they start having more work come in the door and so they start throwing people at the work, [which makes] the organization becomes more complex,” said James. “And so, they didn’t necessarily address all the rules when they were in [an] earlier stage and those rules come back to haunt them.”  

Watch the entire video to hear more from James on how to lead your company through growth and to learn what stage of growth your company is in.

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