The Stages of Growth clarifies the optimal number of managers and leaders for a business. This blog post shows what that ideal number looks like across the seven Stages of Growth. This framework serves as the ideal for businesses to follow, with the management and leadership teams growing in proportion to the needs of the organization. In reality, however, many leaders miss these transitions.

The Position Role Sheet is a management tool that organizes the work through Positions, Roles, and Types of Work. It is a fundamental way to accomplish the goal of first organizing the work before organizing the people doing the work. As a building block for departments of all sizes, Position Role Sheets break down the roles and responsibilities of each position within a department.

This natural tendency to focus on the immediate needs of one’s department can work against the success of the enterprise. Due to daily challenges, needs, and opportunities, departments can become self-focused and lose sight of the big picture. The outcomes of this silo mentality are a lack of cooperation and hoarding of information. What works for one department might make things difficult for another. Departments begin to compete for resources without understanding or even caring about the needs of the enterprise.

Dr. W. Edward Deming is recognized as the father of the modern Quality Movement that ignited new ideas and focused energy on process improvement. He contributed to Japan’s economic recovery after World War II, largely through his influence over manufacturing processes.

Dr. Deming was a champion of systems and processes. At one point, he made this poignant statement: “If you cannot define what you are doing as a process, you do not understand what you are doing.”

A Key Performance Indicator, or KPI, as it is commonly referred to, is a measurement that helps gauge the success of a business, department, or team. By tracking the outcomes that are being achieved, a company gets insight into what is and what is not working.