Uber is a global behemoth and one of Silicon Valley's most successful companies and one of the most contentious. Uber operates in nearly 600 cities worldwide, and it's said to be worth roughly $70 billion. The 40-year-old founder Travis Kalanick is now supposed to have a net worth of more than $6 billion. But Uber and Kalanick have been caught up in one scandal after another in recent time, calling into question the future of the world's most valuable startup and the future of its founder and his role in the company.
According to Ward, as an organization travels through its existence, it goes through identifiable life stages, which are metaphorically akin to a biological lifecycle. At each of these life stages, as we shall see, there is a different leadership role which is appropriate for the organization in order for it to sustain itself and prosper, hence the Leadership Lifecycle represents the fit between the leadership role and the organizational lifecycle which enables the organization to succeed. Let's explore the various stages to determine if your leadership style is aligned with your organization life cycle. According to Jamie Lawrence from HR Zone.
Creation supported by Creators
The strategic priority for start-ups is to take a product or service to market in the shortest time possible. In order to survive, the start-ups will often have chaotic and frenzied cultures which create environments that are flexible, having little bureaucracy, staff or systems. Their creative, entrepreneurial leaders will know clients, suppliers, and employees individually and are excellent problem solvers.
Growth supported by Accelerators
The next strategy will be to pursue rapid growth but, unfortunately, this often stretches and strains capabilities and systems. To support accelerated growth, leaders must focus on internal issues and add discipline and structure to the business, but without destroying the company through under or over investment or losing its culture and values.
Maturity supported by Sustainers
Having grown rapidly, the organization now needs to focus on the external market and understand how to win and keep market share strategically. Leaders need to realize that maintaining the status quo is insufficient as, ultimately, younger, hungrier businesses will steal their hard-won market share and the company may go into decline. Unfortunately, not all companies can sustain the maturity phase, and decline and annihilation can follow.
Turnaround supported by Transformers
In this phase, the strategy must be to reverse any decline or face ultimate annihilation. Otherwise, falling sales, assets being sold off, cost reductions and lower investments will create a vicious downward spiral of inactivity resulting in bankruptcy. Leaders need to understand how to transform their companies and get them out of the “rut” that they have become entrenched in. Poor routines or negative scripts have become embedded in the organization causing narrow-minded thinking and a loss of creativity and innovation. Their job is to help people “unlearn” old scripts, to challenge the status quo and to bring fresh perspectives to the business thereby creating new profit opportunities.
Decline supported by Terminators
At this stage in the business cycle, the strategy has to be to realize what little value there might be left in the business. In our shrinking world where Sheth’s “Rule of Three” prevails [Sheth, Jagdish, and Sisodia, Rajendra. 2002. The Rule of Three: Why Only Three Major Competitors will Survive in any Market. New York: Free Press.], There can only ever be three major competitors in any given market. The result is that the leader needs to work out how to maximize value: whether by selling to a major player, merging to achieve scale or breaking up the company into its valuable component parts.
Everything has a life cycle, and leadership has a life cycle as well. A leader may be in the prime of their leadership life cycle and come quickly to death through a series of unwise decisions. Each phase of the cycle requires a new set of skills, knowledge, and implementation. What worked for you as a leader when you were just starting, doesn't necessarily work the same way when your company is growing.
For example, Larry Page ran Google as CEO until 2001, when Eric Schmidt was brought in to lead the company as its "adult supervision." Both Brin and Page knew that Google needed a more experience executive to take the company through the next phase of its growth. Steve Jobs said that the time away from Apple allowed him to develop and grow as a leader. As a consequence, his second stint as CEO of Apple was the catalyst that allow the company to become one of the most valuable companies in the world.
When was the last time you stood back and rated your performance and that of your management team? Are you and your team best suited to running your company in its current stage of growth? If yes; great news! If not; now is the time to resolve your concerns so you can continue to achieve your strategic goals.