Building a Career in Stage-5

Best in a Stable Environment

Settling in Mode-5 is satisfactory for many, especially when the business environment is reasonably calm or, if bumpy, then predictable.

If the future is much like the present, you know you have the necessary expertise and commitment. You are working with trusted friends who are experts in their own right, and all are united by a common desire to make the business a great success. They can cover easily for any temporary absence, and keep both operations and planning running smoothly.

In addition, you have the attitudes and capability to create a productive culture throughout the firm, including the strength to wield the power needed to drive through essential, if sometimes unwelcome, changes.

Your personal security is also enhanced because if you have to leave your current business, say due to a board disagreement or following a take-over, then some of your close colleagues will likely follow and form the core group to help you run your next business.

Danger lies in «Not-Invented-Here» attitudes taking root, and the emergence of turbulence or greater competitiveness in the environment. Such challenges call for the principles from the next Stage.

Re: Mentalities

There are many possible combinations.

Unless you are running a family business, you are unlikely to be kinship-centred, and nor are others in the Core Group. In an enterprise of any size, the time and energy demands mean too many absences from the family, mentally and physically.

A profitable family business probably contains both kinship-centred and market-centred individuals in top management. However, problems commonly emerge if the business becomes large and successful, due to emergence of insider-outsider tensions and irrelevant but disruptive family conflicts.

Originally posted: July 2009