For start-ups to succeed, leaders? style must evolve

With layoffs an everyday occurrence, and venture capital drying up faster than the Big Thompson River in August, entrepreneurs have to be ever more vigilant to make their businesses survive and thrive.

A big hurdle to that and a classic problem facing many who start their own companies is successfully evolving their enterprises from start-ups to established, well-planned firms. Often the biggest obstacle to this transformation is the entrepreneur.

The attributes of a successful entrepreneur — someone who can bootstrap a company from nothing to something on precious few resources, someone who longs for autonomy, a problem-solver who likes to take responsibility — may not be attributes that translate well to successful management of a large, profitable, ongoing company.

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The key to keeping a company growing and successful, according to authors Katherine Catlin and Jana Matthews, is effective leadership. That leadership comes from the top, of course, but it can only originate there if the entrepreneur is willing to embrace constant and meaningful change.

Their book, “Leading at the Speed of Growth: Journey from Entrepreneur to CEO,” aims to provide a roadmap for entrepreneurs to do just that — evolve their leadership style and approach to management to fit with each stage of a firm’s development.

Drawing on years of research in the field and hundreds of interviews with entrepreneurs, Catlin and Matthews have packed their 126-page book, published in conjunction with the Kaufman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, with excellent examples of the problems faced by entrepreneurs as they try to evolve into leaders of small but growing businesses. In language that is, unlike many books on management, light on fluff and heavy on insight, the authors begin by defining the four stages of a firm’s development. Within each, they describe the needs of the enterprise and the kind of leadership an entrepreneur ideally provides.

As the enterprise reaches the end of one stage and strives for the next, Catlin and Matthews lay out a plan of action for leadership into and through that stage, and on to the next. “Leading at the Speed of Growth” truly is a guide to successful management of a business from start-up to, if all goes well, market dominance.

Much depends on the willingness of entrepreneurs to “embrace change.” But the nature of an entrepreneur, independent, stubborn and self-reliant, often does not square easily with the need to delegate authority and collaborate on decision-making.

But for an enterprise to expand and succeed, it must by definition grow beyond its start-up roots. Entrepreneurs must become managers who lead, who delegate, who hire others to help run “their baby.” The authors’ points are best illustrated by the anonymous quotes sprinkled throughout the book.

Here, one entrepreneur speaks of the role of entrepreneur as leader:

“A good leader has to be conscious of his or her limitations and has to have plans for getting past those limitations. If he or she can’t, he has to make hard decisions for the benefit of the company. You have to recognize what you need to do differently and adapt to it.”

What Catlin and Matthews describe in detail are plans for evolving from a manager of a start-up to a leader of a large business. The steps and processes they lay out for doing so are thorough. What they don’t say is how many entrepreneurs aren’t capable of this kind of change, and what alternatives might exist for these folks.

Still, they warn early on that “none of these tasks will be easy. You will face challenging personal transitions.” And their best bit of insight, perhaps, in all of “Leading at the Speed of Growth” comes right afterward: “But since the ability to change grows with learning, constant learning is the most critical behavior you need to develop.” Sound advice from a satisfying and helpful book.