Why do companies stop growing?

Growth is a phenomenon that every organisation yearns for and a special few truly experience. Companies start their journey with the objective to expand in every possible direction. Founders dream of augmenting their pool of target customers, branches, and product and service diversity. But things do not play out like that at the end of the day. Plans and goals are all set and shared, work starts, time flies, and after several years, it is found that the milestones are yet to be reached. Why does it happen? What makes a company fall behind?

Not empowering the entry level

The belief of the managerial level that the boss is always right makes people unable to think in new ways. Meetings are held, plans are made, and even participation from all employees is also ensured, but the inability to empower the entry level employees to a measured extent hampers progress. Often it is believed that those working at the entry level are not worthy of the power, despite being the very people who implement the plan, face the various challenges of implementation, and come up with effective solutions. If employees' suggestions and ideas are experimented with, it will breed enthusiasm amongst as them and they will put greater effort into make their work a success, which often leads to growth.

Diversion from the core vision

It is natural that the elements of the external environment will keep changing throughout the year. Sometimes it becomes imperative to opt for cost effective solutions and compromise on premium quality. In such cases, if the original vision was to maintain a superior quality, choosing low cost solutions to adapt to the external environment might yield a negative effect. People also become confused about the image of the company when unrelated diversification in products or service starts to appear.

Changes in higher authority

A change in upper management can change the direction of the organisation. It has been observed that each time there is a change in the higher level, the set of beliefs, values, and procedures also change, which becomes extremely difficult for the employees to maintain as once they have gotten used to one set of working patterns and think in a particular way to move forward, a sudden change in the direction might spoil the progress. 

Lacking people focus

Sometimes, plans are made, decisions finalised, strategies formulated, and every string of preparation weaved behind closed doors, forgetting one element that is the prime factor—the human factor. Before deciding on changes in schedules and working patterns, for instance, it is necessary to consult with the people who will be affected by these changes.

Every organisation aspires towards growth and it is most certainly not impossible to achieve. All it calls for to think strategically, act accordingly, empower and train the related parties, and stick to the core vision.

The writer is Assistant Professor, Faculty of Business Administration, Eastern University.