Unlike many other courses on business, Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Private Businesses, Part II is on online course that focuses not on how to start a business but on how to grow an already existing business. Note that while this course has “Part II” in its title, you don’t have to attend the first part before starting with the second one: there are two parts of the course because they focus on two different stages a business goes through.

The course sounds promising, first of all, thanks to the confidence and rhetorics of the course instructor, professor Edward D. Hess of a University of Virginia, who’s got more than 30 years of prior experience in the business world.

The professor says that any growing business goes through a set of specific stages, bringing forward certain situations and problems, which this course aims to examine.

Smart Growth for Private Businesses Part II will pay the most attention to the people challenge during these processes, because, as professor Edward D. Hess states, the business is practically people doing things for other people.

Six real life stories of successful business will be included in the course. The course will discuss four main things in details. These things are:

1. The development of an entrepreneur, from simply a doer to a person who controls large numbers of people. This part will be about delegating to other people.
2. The engagement environment. This part will discuss how to create the environment where people are truly interested in contributing into the company’s progress.
3. Senior management team building. This part will focus on how to get the team play well together.
4. The challenge of upgrading. As the professor explains, the management that helped you get your business that far may not be the management you need to handle a larger lever. That part will focus on the conflicts that arise in such situations.

All materials for the course will be provided at no cost.  The course itself is based on the book Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Entrepreneurial Businesses by Edward D. Hess.

The additional reading that you might be interested in includes:

• Edward D. Hess, Charles D. Goetz, So, You Want to Start a Business?: 8 Steps to Take Before Making the Leap
• Edward D. Hess, The Road to Organic Growth: How Great Companies Consistently Grow Marketshare From Within
• Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently
• Kim S. Cameron, Positive Leadership: Strategies for Extraordinary Performance
• James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
• Peter F. Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship
• Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
• Charles A. O’Reilly, III and Jeffrey Pfeffer, Hidden Value: How Great Companies Achieve Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People
• Robert I. Sutton, Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best—and Learn from the Worst

You can find more detailed information about the course on its page.