The kind of lesson is that of a transition. As you move from one stage to the next, your story will change out of necessity. A professionally managed company has a different story from the other two stages of organizational development. A bureaucracy certainly operates on the opposite extreme from an entrepreneurial company. This leads us to the belief that you must change your story depending on where you are on the growth line. There is one exception to the match situation. If you are a bureaucracy, you don’t want to encourage a story of bureaucracy. Although you may accomplish the consistency of being in the bureaucracy stage and telling a bureaucracy story, unfortunately, it would be the wrong story. In this instance you want to change both your story and your operating behavior.
Failure to change your story is a serious foundation for failure and explains why so many rapid-growth companies get into trouble. Management doesn’t adjust its story as the business grows from entrepreneurial to professionally manage. As a company reaches a stagnant state the story gets institutionalized to the point that it is dysfunctional to your business process. In these cases your story automatically becomes unauthentic, incongruent, and unbelievable.
Let’s see how your story develops and disintegrates by stages. Every company’s life cycle began as an entrepreneurial activity. Some stay in that stage for years. Others grow into the second stage in a short span of time depending on many factors. The story told during the entrepreneurial years is very exciting. Those are the gogo years. Everything is fast-paced where survival is the name of the game. Serving the customer is the number-one priority. You don’t have the luxury of making mistakes or time to waste on the inconsequential. Little thought is given to job descriptions and less time to policy manuals. The company future is often decided on Friday when the money is counted.