Roy Osing, former executive vice-president of Telus, is a blogger, educator, coach, adviser and the author of the book series Be Different or Be Dead.
First of all, institutions don't kill anything; people do.
That said, every leader wants to grow their company; it is the imperative of their strategic game plan.
The founder of a startup has a vision that they can only realize when a larger and larger market consumes their product or service.
The organization to support the increasing demand grows; infrastructure increases along with the employee base.
What started out as a two-person crew with a pledge to solve a problem and make a difference suddenly becomes a large machine with all the attendant challenges of complexity and bureaucracy.
Under such conditions, how does a leader preserve the inspiration that created the organization in the first place?
How do you prevent the machine from suffocating the small entrepreneurial engine?
1. Take a look at yourself. You may have been successful launching your startup and creating the momentum needed to gain traction in the market, but you may not have what it takes to lead the business through the stresses and strains of growth.
Let go of your ego and make the right call for the future of what you started. Find someone who can turn your brave idea into a real deal.
2. Create a "rules and policy system" that minimizes rigidity and restrictions and maximizes degrees of freedom for employees.
Don't look to best practices for direction; this will only propagate what large organizations do. You don't want to act large. You want to maintain the nimbleness of small.
3. Recruit as many folks as you can from small business. You want practical thinkers and people who have a proven track record of getting stuff done.
4. Develop execution as the competitive advantage of the business.
It's not your intellectual capacity that will set you apart from the competition; it's what and how much relevant stuff you deliver to customers.
An organization that executes brilliantly can only do so if it is lean and mean, with simplicity as a core value. This will hold off the pressures to add unnecessary complexity to the business.
5. Stay close to the front line. The fuel to think big but act small comes from the people who take care of customers day in and day out.
Keeping the inspiration alive requires keeping it real in terms of how customers feel about the business through every touch point and every transaction.
Set up a front-line guidance panel to provide insight and direction to keep the customer in the driver's seat of your business, informing your growth activities.
6. Adopt a "servant leadership" style. People are inspired when they are connected to what the organization is trying to achieve and there is a support system in place to help them do their job and deliver what is expected of them.
Servant leaders ask "How can I help?" often and everywhere and use the answers they get as the critical instrument to keep the organization fresh and vibrant rather than stale and rigid.
Inspiration can dominate institution as the lifeblood of an organization, but it requires a specific culture to keep it alive.
If words like inspire, feel, execute, small, fast, "do it", front-line, simple, less and customers define the conversation in the organization, inspiration is winning the war.
If not, you might be doomed.
Executives, educators and human resources experts contribute to the ongoing Leadership Lab series.