Growing as a company is not just about revenue, products or markets. It also requires personal growth. What worked well in the first phase of your business often no longer works once the organisation becomes larger. Many entrepreneurs recognise the moment when their own way of working threatens to become the bottleneck rather than the engine of progress.

In our advisory programmes we therefore regularly use models such as Greiner and Churchill & Lewis, which show that each growth phase requires a different focus. Not only in terms of structure and processes, but above all in terms of leadership and how you see your role.

From hands-on manager to strategic leader

In the start-up phase, you are involved in everything: product development, sales, customer contact, internal processes. You are the business. But as the organisation grows, your role inevitably changes:

• from doing everything yourself to enabling others to do it,
• from managing the details to steering on direction and outcomes,
• from fixing things directly to looking ahead and setting priorities.

That is not an easy shift. It requires trust, the courage to build a team that can take ownership, and a conscious decision to let go of tasks that once naturally belonged to you.

Why this matters for growing organisations

When leadership grows alongside the business:

• autonomous teams emerge,
• decisions are made better and faster,
• and the company can grow in a sustainable and scalable way.

When that development does not take place, we often see:

• dependence on a single person,
• slow decision-making,
• the feeling that “everything has to go through you”.

With the result that growth becomes heavy, complex and exhausting.

Our role

At ECFG, we support entrepreneurs and management teams who are in the middle of this transition.
Sometimes in our role as investor, sometimes as corporate finance advisor, and regularly simply as a sparring partner on leadership and organisational development.

Together, we look at questions such as:

• Which leadership style fits the phase the organisation is in right now?
• How do you distribute responsibilities within the management team?
• How do you create space to keep looking ahead?

As one of our portfolio CEOs put it so aptly:

“I thought my company needed to grow. In reality, I first needed to let myself grow.”

In closing

The shift from entrepreneur to organisation builder is not a leap, but a growth path. And you don’t have to walk that path alone. Would you like to spar about your role in the next phase of your company?

Send our Managing Director Hans Bloemen a message at bloemen@ecfg.nl or call him on +31 6 5161 5425.

Together, we build sustainable growth – for the organisation and for you as a leader.