Like Cycle of Businesses from the Book Predictable Success

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According to the book “Predictable Success,” businesses have life cycle.
Early Struggle
It feels like you’re hacking through the jungle, as you fight to keep your newly-born organization alive. The two main challenges are (1) making sure there is enough cash to keep going, until (2) you’ve clearly established that there is a market for your product or service. The mortality rate of organizations is high in this stage – over two-thirds of all organizations don’t make it out of Early Struggle. You’re fighting for your organization’s very existence…

Fun
You’ve broken through the Early Struggle – you have cash (at least enough to take the pressure off), and an established market: it’s time to have Fun! Now you’re free to concentrate on getting your product or service into the market, so the key focus now moves from cash to sales. This is the time when the organization’s myths and legends are built, and the ‘Big Dogs’ emerge – those loyal high-producers who build the business exponentially in this time of rapid first-stage growth.

White Water
The very success that you reaped in ‘Fun’ brings with it the seeds of Whitewater: your organization becomes complex, and the key emphasis shifts once more, from sales to profitability. Achieving sustained profitable growth requires you to put in place consistent processes, policies and systems.
Unfortunately, putting those systems in place proves harder than you expected. Making the right decisions seems easy, but implementing decisions, and making them stick is incredibly difficult.
The organization seems to be going through an identity crisis, and you may even be doubting your leadership and management skills.

Predictable Success
You’ve developed a team that has successfully navigated your organization through Whitewater – congratulations! You have reached the prime stage in your organization’s growth – what I call Predictable Success®.
Here, you can set (and consistently achieve) your goals and objectives with a consistent, predictable degree of success. Unlike ‘Fun’ (when you were growing, but weren’t quite sure how or why), in Predictable Success you know why you are successful, and you can use that information to sustain growth in the long term.

Treadmill
In principle, there is no reason for any organization to decline from the position of Predictable Success. In practice, many organizations begin to swing too far toward dependance on process and policies. Creativity, risk-taking and initiative decline in response, and the organization becomes increasingly formulaic and arthritic.
Working for the organization at this stage in its development can feel like being on a Treadmill: a lot of energy is being expended, but there’s little sense that forward momentum is being achieved. There’s an overemphasis on data over action, on form over content. Good people start to leave – many of whom have been with the organization for some time. Even the entrepreneurial founder(s) (if they’re still there) may be becoming frustrated and threatening to leave also.

The Big Rut
Treadmill is a dangerous stage in the organization’s development: if it is checked in time, creativity, risk-taking and flexibility can be re-injected, taking the organization back to Predictable Success. Left unchecked, however, the organization will decline further into The Big Rut.
At this stage, process and administration have become more important than action and results. Worse, the organization loses its ability to be self-aware, and cannot diagnose its own sickness and decline. When an organization reaches The Big Rut, it can stay there for a long time, on a very gradual, slow decline.

Death Rattle
Eventually, for all bureaucracies, there is a last final attempt to resuscitate the organization, whether by the appointment of bankruptcy practitioners or by being acquired. Either way, the organization will not survive in its present form.
After a brief Death Rattle (when illusory signs of life may be seen), the organization dies in its present form.