If you are in business and you are growing, you will hit inflection points. So it’s not whether they will happen, it’s how you will deal with them when they do happen.
Andrew Grove describes inflection points very well in his book Only the Paranoid Survive”
An inflection point occurs where the old strategic order dissolves and gives way to the new, allowing the business to ascend to newheights. However, if you don’t navigate your way through an inflection point, you go through a peak and after the peak business declines. It’s around the inflection points that managers puzzle and observe ”Things are different. Something has changed. “
For many, the following will be a familiar scenario. You start your business, you get some customers, probably in the “family and friends” category, provide good service, and you start to grow. As you grow, you find yourself with less and less time to find new customers, serve current customers and retain customers. You are likely not to have a growth plan and not much of a support structure for your business. A moment of truth has arrived – you have just hit an inflection point. And how you deal with it will determine if your business continues to grow or it begins a slow and painful decline.
The euphoria of early business success is inescapable, but it can also be a mental fogging machine. Early success blinds you to the realities of building your business. We have heard: we don’t need to brand ourselves we’ve done OK so far without it. Or, my accountant takes care of my books, why do I need financial statements that’s a waste of time and money – we’re doing OK. Or, the tendency to chase after every new market segment without realizing each one represents a different approach and may require different resources. You may have heard these stories; you may have experienced them yourself.
Identifying and managing through an inflection point is important for the health and welfare of your business. And if you are new to business or new to running a company, do realize that inflection points exist and they are to be taken very seriously. To loosely paraphrase Marshall Goldsmith, what got your business to where it is now will not get you to the next level of business success.
Copyright 2011 Kubica and LaForest
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