The fact is, you can never tell where your company's next great idea is going to come from. The formative stage draws to a close when you know what you are going to do and how you are going to get there. In the growth phase, the plans you put into action reap positive results. Your job now is to constantly fine-tune the plan with incremental improvements to ensure successful implementation. But with success, signs of trouble begin to appear.
Functional departments grow and begin to move in separate directions.
Your people lose touch with the corporate focus, complain that they have too many priorities, and spend all their time fighting fires. As CEO, you spend more of your time with financial, legal, and regulatory concerns. Do nothing, or continue focusing only on incremental improvements, and you'll fall into the Spin Cycle. Essentially, your choice is to transform, or die. To move on, the CEO must do more than react with the popular Band Aids - reorganizing, hiring a new VP, revamping sales commissions, instituting training programs.