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iQuestions Faculty, Ron Price 
 
 
Question: 
 
As our company matures, what are some tips to handle our growth? 
 
Answer: 
 
Every company goes through a growth-cycle, and I like to compare it 
to growing up.  
 
If you think about what it’s like to be a toddler or a young child, in a 
company’s growth-cycle that’s comparable to the entrepreneurial 
stage. In the entrepreneurial stage, you’ve got lots of energy, lots of 
drive. It’s usually driven by a leader who has a vision that they’re 
willing to sacrifice greatly to achieve.  
 
This is a tremendous time of growth and energy and all kinds of things 
are happening, but oftentimes a company will then move into the next 
stage— that we call the professional stage— which is sort of like 
adolescence.  
 
When you go through adolescence, you probably remember, some 
days you act very grown up, and other days you don’t act so grown 
up. You have to struggle with zits and things like that.  
 
In a corporation, this is the time when we’re developing more 
structure and identity, and oftentimes it involves passing leadership 
from the entrepreneur to a group of professionals or a management 
team. And sometimes the organization acts very mature, like they 
have their act together, and other times they sort of regress back into 
childhood, or back into the entrepreneurial part where there’s a lot of 
energy and maybe not the right kind of direction. 
 
 
 
The third stage of an organization is the institutional stage. When we 
move into this stage, I compare it to moving into adulthood. If you 
think about what the challenges are in adulthood, you have to start 
thinking about your weight-management and exercise, and you’re 
trying to maintain your vitality because you don’t have all that energy 
you once had when you were a young kid or a teenager. 
 
In a company, in the institutional stage, we have to think about 
innovation and the possibility that what we’re doing might become 
obsolete. We have to reinvent or recreate ourselves, and sometimes 
we have to cut away the fat or we have to exercise the organization so 
that it stays vital and healthy.  
 
So you have these three stages: the entrepreneurial stage, the 
professional stage, and the institutional stage. It’s not that one is 
better than the others; it’s just that they all have their own unique 
energies and opportunities, and their own unique challenges as well.  
 
Wherever you’re at, if you think about what’s unique in each of those 
stages, you’ll understand how you can keep growing and remain 
healthy and vital in the days to come. 
Price -2- 
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