Management
Issue No. 2 - September/October 2001
growing diamonds
How can you predict the way a business will grow — when and what it will need to do to prosper? The exact answer is ‘you can’t’, but international accounting firm BDO since February has been using a unique model that offers its Adelaide clients a very useful yardstick.
Basically, the DIAMOND model, developed from real-world experience by BDO’s head office in the UK, provides a framework for understanding the stages of business growth.
“The DIAMOND model helps you to anticipate issues and prepare for them. You are able to focus on the issues that matter most," says BDO South Australia’s business development partner, Rudy Pieck. “We use it as a diagnostic tool that highlights where problems are developing that haven't been dealt with properly.”
The model illustrates the attributes and challenges facing business at certain identifiable stages of life. This can apply to whole enterprises or elements of a business, which can be ‘out of alignment’, one process mature and another new and volatile. Businesses don’t necessarily move through the stages progressively, or spend ‘typical' periods of time on the various levels. DIAMOND itself is evolving as BDO refines its knowledge.
“The emphasis is to look forward rather than back,” says Rudy. “The model is particularly geared towards the fast-growing SME, driven by entrepreneurs’ who we define as people who are never satisfied with the status quo.”
The DIAMOND acronym stands for a chain of developmental stages. According to BDO, growth research took a giant leap forward with a seminal study that Prof Larry Greiner of the Harvard Business School published in 1972. Prof Greiner and others variously postulate three, four or five growth levels; BDO’s model identifies seven, including the initial ‘Dreaming‘ stage which none of the others consider.
Dreaming involves dream...
