The Rise and Fall to Growth
Tackle It Before It Tackles You
[part 4: when]
You're a winner for a lifetime
If you seize that one moment in time
Make it shine
…
Whitney HoustonImagine you’re a pilot preparing for takeoff. Timing and focus are crucial in aviation. If you miss your slot or delay too much, you might experience congestion in the skies, increased fuel consumption, and missed opportunities for a smoother flight. If you miss the focus or set it to the wrong priority, the whole board will be at risk.
In business, tasks, decisions, and opportunities are like flights waiting to take off. Taking the right focus at the right time ensures a smoother journey towards your goals. However, if you miss the focus or timing, at minimum the costs can be significant — the congestion of missed opportunities, the extra fuel consumption of unnecessary setbacks, and the turbulence of unfulfilled potential.
Hope you have already reviewed other articles (“what”, “why” and “who” ) in this series where we are trying to figure out the basis of some framework(ODC), that will help to manage the continuous growth of the organization as a multidimensional nonlinear dynamical system. Now it is time to understand the right moment when organizations’ leadership should place the ODC framework under the focus.
Understanding of momentum in business.
When thinking about momentum in business I’m always getting to the swing model, with the initial push representing the launch of your company. In the early stages, it takes effort and energy to set the swing in motion — much like the initial investments, strategies, and hard work needed to get your business off the ground.
The rhythmic and upward movement of the swing is the business momentum. It’s about finding the right balance and timing to maintain a steady and upward trajectory. Just as a swing requires periodic pushes to go higher, your business momentum involves strategic initiatives and innovations to propel it to new heights. The height reached by the swing represents the level of success your business achieves. Business momentum is about gradually reaching higher peaks, surpassing previous milestones, and elevating your business to new levels of growth and achievement.
The chains supporting the swing symbolize the foundational elements of your business — strong infrastructure, effective systems, and a solid team. Business momentum involves strengthening these chains to ensure the stability and resilience of your company.
The adaptive nature of business symbolizes the back-and-forth movement of the swinging motion. Your success is derivative of your position and motion not only in the frontward swing but also in the backward swing. Momentum involves not only moving forward but also adjusting to changing market conditions, customer preferences, and industry trends.
In this swing analogy, business momentum is not just about the initial push but about finding the right rhythm, balance, and strategic pushes to keep your business swinging toward continuous success.
So When?
The moment when entrepreneurs with palpable excitement showcase their brainchild to the world. The moment when you’ve been meticulously crafting and refining an idea, and now you’re about to release it into the wild, hoping it spreads its wings. The culmination of hard work, creativity, and a lot of sleepless nights. It is an exhilarating yet nerve-wracking experience. Will the market respond positively? Have you truly identified and addressed the pain points of their target audience? It’s a moment of vulnerability, a leap of faith into the unknown.
Can you imagine the organization’s growth dynamics considerations in the priority list at that moment? If you think yes, then you urgently need to revisit the values and logic system you are using to build up your priorities.
That is the moment when entrepreneurs are passing the period of creativity-driven data and now it is time for data-driven creativity. Now they eagerly await feedback from the market. They’ve been so close to the project that external perspectives become invaluable. The first product or service launch is the first real opportunity to gauge how well the product resonates with users. It’s like awaiting reviews for a play you’ve written — you hope the audience applauds, but you’re prepared for constructive criticism.
Successful entrepreneurs understand that the launch is just one step in a larger journey to market acceptance. Yet there is a need for proof of sustainability and time to build the momentum for the first swing. Failures or setbacks are seen as opportunities to learn and pivot. The experience is a testament to resilience and adaptability.
Market acceptance is a nuanced concept and doesn’t have a strict definition, but several signs like a growing user base, repeat business, increasing sales and revenue, demand outpacing supply, customer advocacy, and organic media recognition indicate the market has embraced a product or service. The positive responses become a source of contagious energy. The entrepreneur starts to see the tangible impact of their creation, and the thrill of success begins to set in. It’s a high that comes from knowing that your value proposition is making a positive difference in people’s lives.
While these signs are positive indicators, experienced entrepreneurs will know that market dynamics could change. Continuous monitoring, adaptation, and innovation are crucial to sustaining market acceptance over the long term.
As agreed in the previous articles of this series the value proposition needs infrastructure to support its continuity. Market acceptance signs will indicate the time to focus on the base infrastructure of the value proposition. At that point, the business leadership should rethink the further strategy and all structures and components created to reach the point of market acceptance.
That is the point when ODC should come to the stage. The infrastructure for sustainable growth cannot be functional without involving the organization’s and market’s dynamics as a conceptual part of its building blocks definition. From that point, the ODC integration delay is becoming a question of cost.
In the early stages of infrastructure development, there will be no cost associated with such dynamic concept integration. But when the initial point is missed the developed infrastructure will evolve under the force of increasing requirements of the organization and leadership’s passion for experiments. Accordingly, the cost of required changes for dynamic concept integration will take the snowball pattern. At some point, the associated cost will be so high that going with changes may put the whole organization’s existence at risk.
The evaluation of the cost associated with required organizational changes is not accidental at the point when the train is already missed. The creaks and squeaks from the swing’s chains transform into groans, a more desperate cry for attention. The rust spreads, and the structural integrity weakens. It becomes apparent that if left unattended, these chains are on the verge of breaking.
Conclusion
The right time to solve the comfortable living space and lifestyle-related challenges is when you build a house. Any shortcut that has been made during the build process will create a cost with an exponential growth pattern.
All software engineers are very familiar with the term Technical debt, and all entrepreneurs know well about Financial debt. Similarly, business leaders should be also familiar with the term Organizational debt. As with any other depth concept, it’s an organizational solution shortcut with payables in the future. Over time, these shortcuts add up, creating a kind of debt that needs to be repaid.
As a bottom line, having market acceptance for your value proposition should initiate the required infrastructure build-up. Taking organizational build-up shortcuts at that stage, not taking into account the market’s and organizational dynamics will develop an organizational debt, which can “kill the company even quicker” than any other kind of debt.
Thank you for reading. Hope to see you in [part 5: how]. Stay calm.
