I am changing gears in the business

Small businesses "change gear" when:

• you survive that first wild year and you can start plugging the leaks and baling out and try to get things stabilised
• you reach a point where slogging on doing what you are doing is not attractive so you lift your game: scale things up and tighten things up and get some real money coming in
• you reach a point where slogging on doing what you are doing is not attractive so you tidy things up and tighten things up ready to sell it
• you reach a nice stable state and you want to level them out and coast home to retirement
• you land (or are trying to land) a big deal that will require big changes to deliver it
• the business passes from parent to child
• the business has new owners (or receivers)

It is time to introduce some Practices where there aren't any, and review the ones that are there and improve them if necessary.

Look at the names of the Maturity Levels.  if you have come through a storm and you want to get things in control, you need to at least have the Level 1:Controlling Practices in place.  If you want a nice tidy busines that you can see and measure then the Level 2:Managing Practices are required.   if you want to move up a gear, run a tighter ship, lift your game, squeeze some efficiencies... all those clichés ...  then look at the Level 3:Improving Practices.  But you can't run before you walk.   To get to Level 2 or 3 you really need to get the lower level Practices in place first. Some business methodologies are quite rigid that you shouldn't move on until all Practices in a level are in place.  Remember the CoPr approach is whatever works, makes sense and is achievable, so you may end up working on Practices from a couple of levels at the one time.  But in general they build on each other.