Have you heard any of the following lately?

“I’m OK with how things are.”
“The timing for this isn’t quite right.”
“Seems like a lot of pain for such little gain.”
“We need more buy-in to do this.”
“That may work elsewhere, but not here.”
“We tried something like this before, and it didn’t work.”

These are early warning signs that your once high-spirited organization is vulnerable to what might best be termed “big company sickness.” What is it? It’s something that preys on very successful small businesses. It goes something like this:

As business begins to boom, the fight-to-survive instinct fades, and the entrepreneurial spirit isn’t quite what it was when the company was a startup. Sometimes it’s completely missing in action (MIA). More and more people seem to need more resources to get ideas implemented quickly. Eventually, the ability to flex, react, and innovate is lost.

Addicted to resources

But that’s not how the company began. Maybe it didn’t start in the proverbial basement or garage, but it certainly started with little of everything—money, space, and labor. There was a goal, and a passion for reaching it. Those limits made the company more creative and resourceful than it is today. Today, the addiction to resources is blocking innovation.

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