There are several factors that compromise companies experiencing rapid growth namely;

People and culture

It’s difficult to sustain regular growth without hiring more people. When growing a start-up, the typical mantra is “I’ll work harder.” This is intuitive and great on the surface, but there’s a tipping point. Startup culture can become toxic when people are working 100-hour weeks. While this can seem like an admirable part of the culture, it’s bad for employee health and increases burnout. Stress and anxiety lead to avoidable mistakes and foster an oppressive culture.

There is a temptation to promote individuals just because they were with the company in the early days. As companies move from the initial startup phase and move onto being a larger organisation, many senior leaders struggle with leading in a much larger organisation.

Developing their skills as they transition from individual contributor in the early days to leader is key to enabling them to step up.

Maintaining a startup, innovative culture in hypergrowth can be difficult. However, a strong company culture is essential for motivating employees to excel and exceed expectations, especially during times of rapid scaling. Hiring for culture fit is essential, as well as actively maintaining culture consistent behaviour in all that they do.

A strong company culture is essential for motivating employees to excel and exceed expectations, especially during times of rapid scaling.

Driving efficiency while maintaining flexibility

Rapid growth is great until you realise there is no organisational foundation to support it. Hypergrowth companies often experience ‘IT efficiency debt’, where product and go-to-market activities are prioritised over business operations in order to capture market share. There is a fear that things are moving at such pace, that if you stop to fix your problems, you’ll be left behind. There is a risk that in the longer term, it can lead to wasted effort, frustration, and a decrease in employee morale.

For businesses growing through mergers or acquisitions, it can be tempting to use the existing, ‘perfectly adequate’ systems and processes. Using best-in-class systems from the get-go, means the organisation doesn’t have to manage complex interfaces, data architecture challenges later, and ultimately can offer the customer a superior experience.

Compliance and regulation

Regulatory requirements are ever changing and expanding. Ensure that the organisation has a clear set of rules that every employee must adhere to, and that it is a framework that can be understood. A good compliance team is a strong enabler, so the quality of the compliance team matters.

For further information, including details on how to manage growth using scenario planning and forecasting, download our full whitepaper.

Check out the next two areas, managing runaway costs and why spreadsheets are a hidden productivity killer in our upcoming blog, so keep an eye on our social channels where we’ll be publishing details.

If you missed our blog on the characteristics of hypergrowth click here.