One of the things I'm trying to understand is how a rapidly growing organisation achieves scale and retains (or develops) agility simultaneously. When there's not much money in the bank/ revenue being generated, the organisation is forced to focus, and even if it does scale, it would do so in a particular domain in a given time frame, before moving on to another.
But what happens when there's no dearth of financial resources and/or the organisation is in a business environment that demands scale for survival? One way I've seen organisations do it is to go on a hiring spree and get as many people on the floor as possible. But I've also seen it being counter productive, as either people lose clarity (of their role) in the medium term and quit or they get frustrated with organisational will getting in the way.
To elaborate, in the first case, the organisation is not able to define roles, let alone c
areer paths beyond basics, because the business domain/environment is still nascent. The employee may not be able to cope with it after a while. Also, rampant hiring many a time leads to massive role overlapping. In the second case, the number of decision makers and dependency across the system increases so much with scale that things do not move as fast as the employee would desire.
To me, a good senior management team that is able to articulate the changing dynamics, lay out rules on what decisions should involve whom, and align middle management and further so everyone pulls with the same end goal (need not be in the same direction, but that's a different debate 🙂 ) in mind is probably what can help help achieve/retain agility with scale. In all of this, communication is key, but that's easier said than done.
Anything you'd like to share from your experiences?
until next time, weighing scales
In short, there is no right answer to this one. You’ve articulated the issue my company is going through as I write this. I’ve made a one line decision “Never say no to business, figure it out during delivery”, because “to be a force to recon with in the long term, you need to survive the short terms”. In trying times like these, investing on a strong Quality and training team yields far more dividends than “saying NO to work because you don’t have capacity to handle”, this is a better place to be than not have business
Absolutely. Saying no to work is an option very few can afford. But how you scale up will also decide longevity.