About our approach to advisory and compliance
It is important to understand the life cycle of a business in order to quantify appropriate solutions. We use Greiner’s model to map the phases during which companies will encounter different crises, and we tailor our financial approach to address each particular challenge. The key is to plan solutions proactively for the moments when organizational problems are likely to arise. The underlying idea is that a business must adapt continuously in order to thrive and succeed over the long term.
Having plans in place is proven to help overcome challenges — even if you never face these exact scenarios. Adopting a structured framework for planning responses to the various crises a business will encounter throughout its lifetime reduces risk and keeps long-term sustainability at the forefront.
Adapt and thrive.
Greiner’s Growth Model
Phase 1: Growth Through Creativity
In its early stages, an organization is driven by the creativity, energy, and entrepreneurial instincts of its founders. Structures are informal, communication is fluid, and decisions are made rapidly. The primary focus is on product development, customer acquisition, and establishing a foothold in the market.
Crisis of Leadership:
As the organization expands, informality becomes insufficient. Founders may lack the managerial skills required to handle growing complexity, and strategic direction can become unclear. This results in a leadership vacuum and operational confusion, creating the need for professional management and more formal organizational systems.
Phase 2: Growth Through Direction
To resolve the leadership crisis, organizations introduce formal structures, defined roles, standardized processes, and hierarchical authority. A strong central leader typically emerges, implementing budgeting systems, performance controls, and operational procedures. Stability, efficiency, and control become dominant priorities.
Crisis of Autonomy:
While this structure creates order, it often suppresses initiative and entrepreneurial behavior. Employees may feel constrained by rigid rules and excluded from decision-making, leading to declining motivation and innovation. Pressure builds for greater empowerment and flexibility.
Phase 3: Growth Through Delegation
To restore motivation and responsiveness, organizations decentralize authority and delegate decision-making to business units, divisions, or teams. Managers are empowered, accountability increases, and incentives are often tied to performance. Leadership shifts from direct supervision to enabling and monitoring.
Crisis of Control:
Decentralization introduces coordination challenges. Senior leaders may struggle to maintain alignment across independent units, resulting in fragmentation, duplication of effort, and inconsistent strategies. The organization risks losing coherence and strategic focus.
Phase 4: Growth Through Coordination
Organizations respond by introducing formal coordination mechanisms such as strategic planning systems, cross-functional integration, centralized support services (e.g., HR, IT, finance), and standardized reporting. These mechanisms aim to balance autonomy with alignment and restore organizational unity.
Crisis of Red Tape:
Over time, coordination mechanisms can become excessive. Bureaucracy expands, decision-making slows, and administrative burdens increase. Employees experience frustration, reduced agility, and declining responsiveness to change.
Phase 5: Growth Through Collaboration
To overcome bureaucratic rigidity, organizations adopt more flexible, collaborative structures. Emphasis shifts to teamwork, networks, matrix structures, and informal communication. Innovation, experimentation, and shared ownership of outcomes are actively encouraged, often enabled by digital technologies.
Crisis of Identity / Psychological Saturation:
High levels of collaboration can create ambiguity around roles, authority, and accountability. Employees may experience overload, burnout, or confusion in complex matrix environments. Organizations also risk losing a clear sense of purpose and identity, prompting the need for renewal or new growth trajectories.
Phase 6: Growth Through Alliances (and Beyond)
Although not part of Greiner’s original model, many scholars recognize a sixth phase driven by external growth factors. Organizations increasingly pursue partnerships, alliances, ecosystems, and mergers and acquisitions to access new capabilities, markets, and innovations.
Crisis of Identity / Interdependence:
As external relationships deepen, organizations face challenges in maintaining a coherent culture, strategy, and identity. Misaligned incentives, governance complexity, and dependency risks can undermine performance and dilute strategic focus.
Triple bottom line accounting
Triple Bottom Line accounting is a sustainability and performance-measurement framework that expands the traditional notion of organizational success beyond financial profit to include social and environmental value creation. It was formally articulated by John Elkington (1994–1997), who argued that organizations should be accountable for three “bottom lines” instead of just one. The implication of this theory is that business extends beyond simple profitability and must consider its effects on people, communities, and the natural environment.
Essentially, businesses can create lasting, multidimensional value by operating within a broader social context and addressing issues that reach beyond immediate financial returns. By solving problems that affect stakeholders and ecosystems, the theory helps ensure a business’s long-term resilience and relevance.
The most successful enterprises enrich the communities in which they operate, contributing more than money to collective well-being. Businesses don’t operate in a vacuum — they are integral parts of a complex human ecosystem.
By integrating this theory in our approach, we focus on the maximal long-term value that your business can achieve.