Rapid business growth can be an incredibly exciting experience. It also usually tends to be VERY overwhelming for the business, its leaders and its employees.

If you want your business to maintain its growth AND be successful (of course you do!) it’s critical to get out in front of the typical potential challenges that accompany rapid business acceleration.

The first step all leaders must take is to realize that the way you’ve always done things at your organization simply won’t cut it anymore.

Imagine if your small company grows by, say, 120 percent — the average first-year growth for startups according to EQUIDAM. That means your current number of employees has probably more than doubled. Now, think about how your business currently runs.

Do you really think if you continue with your status quo that your business will continue to grow, and your employees will continue being happy? That everything will pleasantly stay the same and you don’t have to change anything?

It’d be great if that was the case, and if so, you should definitely share your secrets with the world. The hard truth is that scenario rarely happens.

Here’s a perfect example:

I had a call recently with a company experiencing a multitude of challenges due to their fast growth.

In this organization, many people had been catapulted into their first manager roles, out of necessity. This created many challenges for the individual managers as well as team members who didn’t feel they are getting what they need.

On top of that, new departments have been established, and silos are being formed because the communication channels are not clear. The employees, and even the leaders, began to think project-to-project and lost sight of the larger organizational outlook.

The company reorganized earlier this year to try to address these communication issues (which has helped in some areas), but they’re still experiencing siloed structures where people are sitting right next to each other and still aren’t collaborating the way they should.

Their biggest goal for bringing Fierce into the organization was to start breaking down some of the psychological walls that have been built due to landscape that was created from their rapid change.

WHERE GROWTH HURTS THE MOST

When new teams or departments form, there’s a risk of silos forming that didn’t exist prior to the business’ growth. Methods of communication may also need to shift, via:

• Email
• Slack/Teams/Collaboration software
• In-Person Meetings
• Instant Messenger
• Project Management Platform
• File Management Platforms
• Sales CRM

What worked before may no longer be efficient or effective in an environment where expansion is happening quickly. Conversations between certain people or teams may need to happen now (if they’re newly formed), or more often.

Quick expansions can also, unfortunately, create psychological walls that negatively impact culture. The important aspect to remember is that tackling this issue is not just an issue reserved only for HR. 

When communication suffers, so does the cultural health of the company, and it affects everyone. This can include lack of clarity around roles, frequent miscommunication, and decision making without collaboration.

When the conversations that need to happen aren’t happening, it leads to silos and separation that have a negative impact on culture.

As the company grows, leaders will need to develop the conversation skills needed to effectively manage the evolving needs of their teams and the organization. What we see often are internal promotions that are based on tenure, but many of these leaders being promoted don’t have the training or the skills to manage other people.

If you don’t have a strategy to accommodate the expansion of your company, it’s not a matter of if, but rather when and how it will cause problems for your organization. The more you grow, the more your problems will, too. Bottom line, you need a plan.

Taking Steps to Successfully Navigate Business Growth

Fortunately, the problems many companies face in the midst of rapid growth can be remedied, and your organization doesn’t have to go to the dark side. Here are some steps you can take:

1. When you see it, say it.

One way you can assist in this process whether you’re a leader or individual contributor, is to offer feedback at the moment. If, for example, a current method of communication isn’t working, provide an idea for a better method. If something you see is working or you’re happy with a recent change, offer praise for reinforcement.

If you or one of your team members are struggling with feedback, keep this in mind: More than 75 percent of employees believe that feedback is an incredibly valuable tool, according to PwC. That said, only 30 percent of people say they receive feedback…that’s a huge disconnect.

Feedback is an opportunity to see what we may not see, and a single conversation may be what saves your organization from chaos during this time of change. We recommend training and practicing what great feedback looks like.

2. Take a regular pulse.

If there’s currently no way of taking a company pulse or team diagnostic, that’s a BIG problem. It’s important to know what people are thinking and feeling, and to find out, you must seek regular input and feedback.

Sending out short surveys on a regular basis will help you determine the health of your culture and overall employee satisfaction.

Pulses will also help prevent “fires” via Glassdoor and the “dumping” of harsh truths during exit interviews. If employees don’t feel comfortable expressing themselves in the workplace, they will express themselves elsewhere or during an inopportune time, and it’s not always pretty. The question to ask is, how can we have these conversations sooner?

The most honest, transparent cultures where there’s a sense of psychological safety and trust address this question by communicating directly to employees. “We want to know what you think!” And, we want to offer avenues where you are able to share your thoughts honestly without fear of retaliation.

Keep in mind that there is some grain of truth in the feedback contained in pulses and surveys — AND be sure to take concerns to heart and put solutions in place as quickly as possible to address them.

Again, this is not just an HR issue. To implement solutions, leaders have to buy-in, as well as be informed and on the same page. This will require conversations to set intentions and next steps.

3. Build and nurture a leadership training program.

When companies need strong leaders to help navigate change, they may need the help of an external program to train leaders in how to do this. Our clients bring in Fierce because their leaders need to know how to coach, give feedback, and have confrontational conversations.

Training is also a great tool to help you avoid an important tipping point in your organization. For example, another organization I spoke with recently felt they had no choice but to fire one of its employees. They didn’t want to do this, but at the time, they didn’t see any other solution.

Consequently, it created a negative atmosphere within the company and was cancerous to the entire team. Bad culture move. And training could’ve prevented the entire situation from happening because employees would have had the communication skills to tackle these negative issues before they snowballed.

If your company is in the process of rapid growth, I can’t stress this enough: take action now rather than later.

It’s harder to create new pathways once bad cultural habits have formed. You have a chance RIGHT NOW to shift your culture in a positive direction now and prevent an unfortunate cultural catastrophe down the road.

Is your organization actively fostering happiness amongst its employees? Better yet, does it even matter if employees are happy or not? Spoiler alert — it definitely does.

Gallup reports that between 55 and 80 percent of employees believe it’s normal to see work as something to be endured, not enjoyed, while according to Forbes, happy employees are up to 20 percent more productive than unhappy employees.

Imagine one of your employees jamming out on a guitar, lifting weights at the gym, or reading a textbook.

You may not make an immediate connection between these behaviors and revenue or results, but can these types of activities influence your bottom line? You bet they can, and it all comes down to encouraging personal development.

Imagine your employees coming into work each day feeling more rested, more accomplished, and that their employer truly cares about them. When employees know you care about their growth, they respond. It builds trust, commitment, and a host of other benefits that impact the bottom line.

Let’s break it down. Here are some big benefits your organization stands to gain by supporting employee personal development:

Retention. The average length of time employees spend at an organization is 4.6 years, while millennials stay with companies even less at an average rate of 3.2 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That kind of turnover gets expensive quickly.

Employees want to be part of an organization that facilitates their growth, and if it doesn’t, they’re likely to leave and take their talents elsewhere. A Better Buys survey found that retention rates are 34 percent higher for employees with access to development opportunities.

Engagement. When people feel their circumstances align with their values (such as growth), they are happier and more engaged because they feel valued and inspired by a sense of meaning. Tom Path, author of “Are You Fully Charged” says “the odds of being completely engaged in your job increases by 250 percent if you work on meaningful projects each day.”

Pursuing interests and goals related to learning, regardless of what they are, is individually nurturing and often builds skills that are translatable to the workplace. That employee jamming out on a guitar from earlier? Think about the stress they will blow off (and not bring to the office) while playing an instrument that they are passionate about, or the discipline and time management skills they’ll take back to the workplace from mastering their instrument.

Culture. Personal development supports a growth mindset and growth-oriented culture, not to mention creativity and innovation. Here are Fierce, we strongly believe you are the culture and it does not exist outside of you — as people develop and grow, your workplace culture will, too.

So, how can you provide development opportunities to your employees?

1. Offer personal development funds

Personal development funds allow employees to spend an allotted amount of money on any type of activity they choose. This could include anything from a music class to a pottery class or even a gym membership.

2. Allow flex time

If an employee is taking on-campuses courses or pursuing an interest that falls inside normal work hours, consider offering flex time. Flex time requires employees to work a set number of hours but during days and times that function with their pursuits outside of work. Accountability is needed here —give trust and hold your employees “able.”

3. Offer tuition reimbursement

Tuition reimbursement is an exciting incentive for employees who are interested in ongoing formal education. Higher education, especially in the United States, can be an astronomical out of pocket expense. Tuition reimbursement offers incentive for employees to bring new knowledge and skills to the workplace when they know they will be at least partially reimbursed for their investment of time and money.

4. Provide learning opportunities

Offer opportunities to educate employees on the latest advancements in training, technology, and industry. In addition to offering leadership development and training, stay up-to-date on unique opportunities such as local learning events and online courses. Offer to cover entry or sign-up fees if possible.

5. Offer participant-driven learning

Support autonomy and personal development by giving employees choices when it comes to what they’re learning and how they’re learning. Take different learning styles into consideration and provide options that allow employees to work at their own pace and in whatever manner will help them retain the information they learn.

6. Ask!

Have a conversation with employees individually. Ask them how they want to develop and what would help them feel more supported and satisfied. There’s no better way to provide personal development opportunities that will make a real impact at your organization than by asking employees directly what would make them happier workers.

It’s incredibly important to let your employees know that you not only support their personal growth, but you follow through by offering real opportunities.