Entrepreneur to Professional Management

Perfect manager for all stages of growth is difficult to find in just one person, but there are examples. During the initial stages, the manager needs to be visionary. This is often the entrepreneurial stage, where an idea is just being articulated, and the manager needs to first coalesce the business plan for the product/service idea, and then get a team of people to buy into the idea on top of that. Entrepreneurial leaders are often visionaries, and this is their key strength (Lewis, 2014).

They are often risk-takers as well. But the key to the success of an entrepreneur is to have a great idea, get the buy-in from others, and then begin to professionalize the operation. The next stage of a business is the growth cycle. At this point, the operation is probably focused on building markets and on scaling up the business.

Flamholtz and Randle (2007) note that this can be a challenging stage for many managers because the entrepreneurial mindset holds that the person probably is a jack of all trades, performing many different tasks. As the company grows, however, this becomes less feasible. The best manager is one who is capable of performing all of the tasks, because the entrepreneur needs to do that, but one is also capable of delegating when the time comes.

This requires a transformation in the mindset of the leader at this point in time, where the leader recognizes that his/her tasks are going to be substantially different from what they were during the earlier stages of the business. The growth stage is basically the professionalization stage of the business.

Flamholtz and Randle (2007) make clear that at this point there needs to be much more formality, in terms of training, in terms of planning, and that at this stage the jobs an responsibilities of different people within the organization need to be defined. If the business is wildly successful, the entrepreneurial manager might not see the need for this formality, but that is an illusion caused by success.

Formal structures do need to be put into place during the growth stage in order that the company is ready when challenges do appear on the market. The perfect manager is then able to sustain the growth stage of the business for a long time. This helps the company to utilize the systems put in place, and take more time with the formalization of the company's management.

An entrepreneurial leader who places emphasis on innovation should be able to maintain an innovative mindset and culture for years, allowing the company to grow throughout this period. Yet sometimes it seems that this is not the case. The perfect manager should be able to oversee a prolonged period of growth, but still be able to manager a shift to maturity. For many entrepreneurs, maturity is a challenging stage because they have a growth mindset. Management systems will be in place at this point, and the manager will have delegated.

Some entrepreneurs and growth-oriented managers exit the company at this point, but in other instances they are able to continue to run the company successfully by focusing on the challenges of maintaining success and improving systems -- Howard Schultz at Starbucks or Fred Smith at FedEx are good examples of entrepreneurs who successfully made the transition from introduction to maturity by adapting their styles. The perfect manager is therefore able to work with this transition, but always to maintain a focus on strong.