5 Critical Ways Management Needs to Change When a Company Scales

Whether your company’s growth is a result of products and services that wow your customers or a series of strategic choices that lead to acquisition, consistently adding new employees to the company roster is a significant achievement. But it can be all too easy for companies to scale their growth without scaling their development – to neglect the professional and organizational stretching that must accompany growth in order for it to be sustainable. 

If you want your company’s growth to pave the way for long-term success, consider these five expert tips on how your management and leadership style must grow, too.  

1. Build culture from the very beginning with onboarding

Whether you’re adding to one team or adding two teams together, onboarding is a critical way to set the stage for positive relationships among employees. But what that looks like in practice will vary from company to company. 

“Every company needs a defined onboarding process, and that’s even truer when you are asking two companies to work together as one,” says Paula Cizek, Chief Research Officer at NOBL. “When people are new to a team, they'll look to others to determine the right way to do things, so identify your company-wide vision for culture and put build those into your onboarding program. For some companies, that will look like built-in mentors and onboarding buddies, for others it could be as simple as a ‘cultural handbook’ that spells it out with expectations and examples.”

Finally, don’t assume onboarding is a one-and-done venture. Cizek continues: “Leaders should monitor the results of the onboarding program regularly, and teams should be encouraged to reward the types of behaviors that you want to grow in your company.”

Related: How to Recruit Informed Candidates at Scale

2. Acknowledge the culture shift from “tribe” to “organization”

Through a series of acquisitions, Wes Burke, Director Human Resources, USA and Canada at Intertek/Vice President of People & Culture at Alchemy, went from a company roster of under 100 to just over 300, with plans to grow over 500 by the end of the year. Moving out of the under-100 band and into triple digits marked an important transition he thinks every company should acknowledge.

“When you have fewer than 100 employees, it’s easy for 1-2 leaders to keep an eye on everything within an organization,” says Burke. “But you can’t operate like that when you expand past the 100 person mark because your leaders will wear themselves and the team out trying to spin so many plates and spinning none of them well. It’s a complete transition from tribe mentality into an actual organization that must hire and empower people to deliver great results independently.”

3. Carefully consider your plans for virtual and in-office teams

Most large-scale acquisitions come with a mix of employee locations, whether it’s multiple offices, mixed onsite and virtual teams, or fully virtual teams. Whether you grow organically or through acquisition, don’t make decisions about employee location based solely on what’s been done before – consider how your structure can serve your company’s greater mission. 

“Hiring onsite versus online is role-based for our company,” explains Burke. “We find that for client-facing roles like professional services and sales, working virtually in the field has no impact on productivity. But for creative and technology roles, we find it’s worth hiring onsite or relocating employees because of the unmistakable synergy of having them in the same building. That turned into two centers of excellence with our development team in one city and our creative team in another.” 

Related: How Fast-Growing Companies Can Scale Their HR Processes

4. Closely monitor employee sentiment 

Any kind of change in the workplace can unsettle employees and leave them wondering how it will affect their role. Make a point to check in with your team at whatever growth markers make sense for your speed of growth – at 100, 250, and 500 employees if it’s organic growth and whenever legally possible if it’s an acquisition.

“Rapid growth is fun to some people and fearful to others,” says Todd Horton, CEO of KangoGift. “You don't want to be the one employee in finance who has to create a reporting system for 1000 clients. That growth will create disengagement. Ensure employees understand that their roadblocks will be cleared as the company grows so that they can learn and contribute.”

One way to help employees acclimate to the change? Let managers lead slightly larger teams and seek out managers with previous experience with rapid scaling.

Horton continues: “Leaders must mix their management teams with people who have been there, done that, to provide the structure and experience to know what to focus on. With a seasoned leader and a large group of colleagues sharing the experience, employees will weather the change with more confidence.”

Related: 8 Engagement Templates to Encourage Employee Reviews on Glassdoor

5. Don’t assume leadership can solve every problem

As a company grows, so do gaps in its management and leadership, which can leave room for error as those teams fill out and form up. Rather than jumping in to control and correct in the midst of this growth, leaders and managers will build more authority and loyalty if they let their employees step up and meet the challenge. 

“Leaders expand their influence when they realize and acknowledge openly to their teams that they don’t have all the answers,” says Scott Miller, EVP of Thought Leadership at FranklinCovey and author of Management Mess to Leadership Success. “It may be counterintuitive because we’re paid to solve, fix, change, find solutions, and ultimately own it ourselves, but leaders exponentiate their reach by recognizing their first and primary job is to recruit and retain talent and make that talent feel valued. How leadership makes the team feel is going to be the game-changer for every organization growing or acquiring.”

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