Generally speaking, business growth is a sign of success. However, when a company grows too quickly and doesn’t have the policies and processes it needs to maintain that growth in place, it can ultimately lead to trouble.
Many Forbes Coaches Council members have seen how businesses lacking sustainable systems and processes can grow beyond their means, impacting both employees and customers. Below, 15 members share telltale signs that a business is growing too fast and how leaders can help manage the growth before it spirals out of their control.
Members pictured from left to right.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.1. Managers Doing Their Teams’ Work
One sign a company is growing too quickly is when managers are doing work that is the responsibility of their team. We are habituated to be “doers,” but as we grow into leaders, we must get better at setting the goals to be achieved and supporting our team to do the work to get there. Managers caught in the “doing” trap often haven’t realized that their role needs to shift as the company grows. - Katie Anderson, Katie Anderson Consulting
2. Hiring Fast And Firing Slowly
Growth is generally balanced between sales and delivery. However, when sales overtake the business’s capacity to deliver, the solution is often to hire anyone and fire no one. This creates a very negative impact on the existing workforce when new C-team players are brought in and treated like kings while the existing A-team players are treated like yesterday’s news. - Chris Averill, Northford Capital
3. High Turnover
If your best performers are leaving despite your company’s growth, it’s likely because they do not buy into your vision, they don’t believe your leaders have the capacity to achieve it, or they don’t feel a tangible connection between their individual passions and your shared mission. - Claire Chandler, Talent Boost
4. Not Fulfilling Increasing Product Demand
A telltale sign that a company is growing too quickly is its inability to fulfill increasing product demand, which can result in clogged cash flow and a sharp decline in customer satisfaction. - Alexandra Friedman, Friedman Business Solutions
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5. Systems That Can’t Handle The Added Volume
One sign that a company is growing too rapidly is if its systems and procedures cannot handle at least double the volume of business. If you normally bring in 10 new clients a month, and then you double that to 20 new clients a month, can the systems and procedures to handle clients handle the added volume? The systems that work for a startup or a small business won’t always continue working as companies hit rapid growth. - Jessica Stroud, She RULES
6. A Sharp Drop In Employee Enthusiasm
As a business scales, it’s normal for responsibilities to increase. Your employees are likely handling more without any improvement in their remuneration. This is a major reason for a morale drop, leading to declining productivity and poor customer service. - Oluwashogo Oyeniyi, Dr Shogo Consulting
7. A Growing Lack Of Communication And Follow-Up
If you are growing too fast, there will be warning signs that things are about to break long before you have a turnover of employees and clients. Signs include rock-star employees being unprepared for meetings, people not speaking to each other before a presentation or decision-making session, people dropping balls and there being little to no follow-up on core processes. - Christine Grimm, Aria Consulting International
8. Chaos And Disorganization Across The Company
When the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing, a company may be growing too quickly. How does this manifest? In the distinction between being “messy” and being a “mess.” “Messy,” though it can be ambiguous, is a hallmark of sustainable, rapid growth. When an obstacle appears, it gets worked through. A “mess” is total chaos and disorganization. This impacts all areas of a company. - David Yudis, Potential Selves
9. Increasing Customer Dissatisfaction
If fulfillment to current customers is compromised and customer satisfaction starts to drop significantly, this is a very concerning sign that a company is more concerned with growth than with delivering quality products and services. While rapid growth by acquiring new clients can feel exciting, retention, referrals, reputation and word-of-mouth are invaluable assets to a company. - Sunny Smith, Empowering Women Physicians
10. Employees Not Sharing Their Views Openly
When employees are not expressing themselves and their points of view openly it means that trust, respect and safety are compromised. This could be an issue with a single leader, leadership in general, the climate among the team members, or employees not having bought into the changes being put forward. Pause to talk one-on-one with people to get to the root cause. Sometimes, growth looks like slowing down to go fast. - Esther Weinberg, The Ready Zone
11. Employees Resisting Their Assigned Tasks
When your employees are passively or actively resisting their assigned tasks, especially on a consistent basis, it is time to get curious and ask open-ended questions to understand the root of the problem, such as, “What are you feeling?” They may be overwhelmed by insufficient or ineffective systems or resources, or they may be worried about the potential impact of the company’s growth on their well-being. - Vered Kogan, Momentum Institute
12. Not Staying True To Your Mission And Strategy
The key to sustainable growth is staying true to your mission and strategy. The best rapid-growth companies know what they are great at doing and relentlessly focus on what differentiates them in the marketplace. The strategy should tell you what you should do and what you should not do. Trying to be all things to all customers is a recipe for burnout and struggles. - Bill Berman, Berman Leadership Development
13. Lacking The Capacity To Onboard New People
Rapid growth is always a tricky story—it can leave a company constantly “on” and can sometimes push it over the edge. No one ever said hyper-growth was easy. To grow your business, you need to put effort into excellent onboarding. New co-workers decide within the first 100 days whether they will stay, engage and become productive or leave. When there is not enough capacity to onboard new people, growth will become dysfunctional. - Katharina Schmidt, Inspiration & Discipline
14. Satisfaction Levels Dropping For Both Customers And Employees
When a company grows too quickly, it puts stress on people and services. The quality of the experience and satisfaction levels for both customers and employees suffer as a result. Keep an eye on your net promoter score, online reviews and attrition rates for both sides of the coin. If these are dipping, reprioritize and pause those stretch areas that are causing the most friction. Aim for sustainable growth. - Liz Whitney, Cove
15. Being Reactive And Focusing On The Wrong Tasks
When a company is growing too quickly, I often see people focusing on the wrong work. In other words, they are more reactive and may dash from one thing to the next, with limited time to pause and reflect on priorities. A simple but powerful exercise is to define the top three areas where they should focus to have the biggest impact on the business and the percentage of time to spend on each. - Neena Newberry, Newberry Solutions
