The business starts to grow structure and may hire additional management.

Job roles become narrower and more focused. Personal agendas may take precedence over real business imperatives.

Communication starts to become a major issue. New staff may be left out of the loop by founders and early hires.

Company growth may stretch managers beyond their personal capability

The need for a clearly articulated, visible, measurable strategic plan becomes critical.

The business is now constantly searching for growth and to keep processes on track.

Multiple new initiatives may be tried, often without proper measurements to ascertain their effect.

Communication continues to be a key issue as strategic priorities become harder to determine.

Proper strategic systems, automation of core process measurements and automated alerts and reporting become critical success and survival factors.

Regular strategic reviews take place to ensure direction is correctly maintained.

Focus now is on maintaining competitive leadership and watching out for new entrants feeding off your success.

Already-proven processes can now be optimised to gain speed and cost advantages.

Strategy should be regularly reviewed to keep the business sharp.

Integration of People, Processes and Systems takes on a high level of importance.

Major investments may require complex business cases to predetermine their potential ROI before committing funds.

Throughout the business, a clear, measurable strategic plan is required with cascaded initiatives, measures and tactical execution plans to communicate the direction of the business.

Regular reviews need to be more formal, while transparent governance ensures accountability to and for all stakeholders.

Fast strategic problem-solving and crisis management urgently required.

Critical review of product and service portfolios, customer segments and processes to seek out and instil profitability. R & D spending may attract government grants or concessional loans.

A fresh perspective can be instrumental in resolving the problems, strengthening the business and taking it into the future with a clear, communicable strategy.