Growth is a good thing, right? Growth means expansion and development and may be measured by sales figures, number of employees, number of facilities, or some other relevant metric. But, as companies grow up, at some point or another, most organizations will enter the equivalent of the difficult teen years. The company begins to outgrow processes that worked well in its infancy. At the same time, the organization may not be mature enough to support things like big technology investments, state-of-the-art manufacturing operations or a company jet. It is at this point that the organization often becomes aware of its own adolescence. Like kids in a growth spurt – tripping over their own feet, uncomfortable in their own skin and not really sure where to turn for the answers to a whole new set of questions. Internal conflicts may become more common as the very cohesive forces that helped to build the company become stumbling blocks. What used to be support structures become impermeable silo walls and simple checks and balances blossom into roadblocks to innovation.

The question of the day is: At what point do you stop building walls and start building flexibility? How do you manage growth without sacrificing innovation? How does your company become a grown up and still maintain an entrepreneurial culture?

My crystal ball is cracked so I don’t have the entire answer but I propose the following as a starting point:

• Encourage and invest in sustaining the sense of commitment that started the company.
• Help managers to view departments as living within moveable architecture – if a wall doesn’t belong, take it down. This may mean redefining entire functions.
• Pay attention to growing pains. They may signal a misalignment within the organization that can have a major impact in the future.
• Help teams to live and breathe a solution-focused culture. Don’t let anyone waste time pointing out issues unless they are available to help figure out a solution.
• Encourage/reward enterprise collaboration – vertical, horizontal, diagonal – anything that facilitates focus and alignment on a larger scale will trickle down and have a positive impact.
• Invoke common sense, rational thinking and logic whenever possible.

These might seems somewhat basic but when it comes to managing organizational growth, it may not be a bad thing to go back to the basics…