The Rise and the Fall of Corposol: Lessons Learned from the Challenges of Managing Growth

This paper examines the Colombian NGO Corposol, founded in 1988 to support the development of microenterprises through the provision of credit, training, and other services. It analyzes Corposol's growth generation and the inadequacy of its organizational development relative to that growth.

The document examines the critical aspects of Corposol's staff development, organizational design and institutional culture to extract lessons about organizational development that are critical to sustainable growth and management.

Lessons learned include:

• It is possible to achieve all: lending methodologies to avoid risk, effective operational procedures to support decentralized lending decisions, and the combination of efficiency and scale to permit financial sustainability. The Corposol case shows what an institution needs to put in place in anticipation of the strains of growth;
• Product diversification and management through a holding company are not bad ideas. Corposol's problems were rooted in how these concepts were structured, set up, and managed, not in the concepts themselves;
• Strong delineation of the roles and responsibilities of the board and management is vital.

[Author's abstract]