When the organisation is small, the leadership is personal and informal. The founders of the young
business are generally actively involved at this stage. With their energetic and opportunistic leadership
style, the creative potential can be channelled into growth. As the organisation grows, production becomes
more efficient and there comes a need for skills relating less to products and marketing issues and more
to the co-ordination of the organisation’s activities. This is a crisis of leadership.
As the business expands, the organisation becomes ‘structural’ with a hierarchy of positions and jobs
moving to greater specialism. This phase of growth exposes weakness in delegation. Management finds
it more difficult to keep detailed control as there are too many activities and it is easy to lose a sense of
the wider picture.