Why Growth Can Break a Good Organization
Updated: 7 days ago
By Paul Gerhardt, PhD, management professor, leadership author, and host of The Better Workplace.
Your organization can win more business and become harder to work in at the same time.
As demand grows, decisions, training, and handoffs need attention alongside sales. The practical leadership task is to identify which part of the organization is running out of capacity, then improve that part before asking everyone to absorb more work.
This companion to Episode 6 of The Better Workplace helps managers examine the strain that growth can place on people, processes, and culture.
Notice when an old strength becomes a bottleneck
Imagine a small service company where the owner approves every unusual customer request. When the team is small, that habit keeps decisions close to the customer. After the company expands, the same approval habit leaves several teams waiting for one person.
The owner may work longer hours while employees have less room to act. Adding another reminder to “respond faster” leaves the approval queue untouched. This hypothetical example shows why a method that worked at one size deserves review at another.
Look for a recurring pattern: more volume, more waiting, more rework, and more pressure on the same dependable people.
Ask where capacity needs to grow
Choose one part of the work and trace it from request to completion.
Where does work wait for a decision?
Which instructions live only in one experienced person's memory?
What information arrives too late for the next team?
Which responsibilities expanded without new time, training, or authority?
What has become harder for employees to raise honestly?
These questions help turn “we are growing too fast” into a specific problem a manager can investigate.
Change one constraint and watch the effects
In the approval example, the owner might define which routine decisions employees can make, what information they need, and which exceptions still require review. Training and a clear escalation route would support that change.
Start with a bounded test. Track waiting time and rework, and ask employees whether the new authority is clear. Faster approvals alone would be a poor result if customer errors increased or responsibility became confusing.
Do not assume that every delay means another employee is needed. The constraint could be staffing, a process, missing information, or an unclear decision. Gather enough evidence to choose a proportionate response.
Protect the culture through daily decisions
Values become practical when managers decide what can wait, who receives support, and how concerns are handled. Ask what employees want to preserve as the organization expands: access to help, respectful feedback, reliable handoffs, or time to learn.
When someone says the old way no longer works, invite an example. Explain what you can change and what requires another decision. Close the loop after reviewing the concern.
A growth review for this week
Complete these five sentences with the people doing the work:
The activity that has increased is…
The point where work now waits is…
The effect on employees or customers is…
The small change we will test is…
The owner and review date are…
Treat this as a discussion guide, not a proven diagnostic tool. The aim is to identify one condition you can improve and check whether the change helps.
Listen to the companion episode
If growth is creating repeated interruptions, continue with Why the Same Workplace Problems Keep Coming Back. If workload is becoming unsustainable, read Burnout Prevention for Leaders.
Ideas behind this lesson
The episode draws on systems thinking and organizational growth, including Senge, Meadows, and Greiner. The review questions and service-company example above are my teaching applications, not a tested intervention from those works. Greiner's article record and abstract describe his model of changing management challenges as organizations grow.
Paul Gerhardt, PhD, teaches management and leadership with a practical commitment to helping people build better workplaces. The examples and exercises in this article are teaching illustrations, unless identified as research findings.
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