Scaling Problems: Fast-Growing Companies
April 4, 2026
How do you keep the momentum and retain what you’ve achieved? What happens when a startup becomes a giant: key employees leave, culture starts to fall apart, strategy stalls, and teams work in silos.
Key employees leave, culture starts to fall apart, strategy stalls, and teams operate in silos. How do you maintain momentum and preserve your achievements after the first phase of rapid growth?
Boom — and the company is at the top
Top execs are killing it, competitors are left nervously smoking at the foot of the mountain, awards, recognition, fame, and multiples in revenue. Ten countries, dozens of offices, thousands of employees on the way.
What’s next?
Next comes the battle to sustain those achievements.
Key employees start leaving: headhunters are already fighting over them, offering crazy packages, perks, equity, and options.
And with them, context walks out the door. New hires can’t take the wheel quickly—they take time to grow into their roles. This is especially noticeable in remote offices.
Differences and rough edges
“Island differences” and “office silos” start to emerge: horizontal connections between teams weaken, and local mindsets begin to replace a shared culture.
People in different countries work differently, don’t know each other, and don’t share knowledge. “No communication between departments” starts showing up more and more often in reviews on job sites like Glassdoor.
It becomes harder to develop middle managers.
New team leads are often promoted from those who are “technically stronger than the rest,” but they don’t know how to manage people. Such leaders burn out quickly and struggle to delegate or build teams.
The gap between strategy and day-to-day reality keeps growing.
The C-level can’t keep up with communicating and aligning the vision. It turns into a “tug-of-war” — strategy lives separately from what’s happening on the ground.
People get lost, look around for direction, take hits from all sides, and start to retreat. Each department begins operating in its own “box.”
Talent starts to leave.
Top performers stop feeling supported in their growth. They leave for places where someone actively helps them develop.
The era of bottlenecks.
Hello, irreplaceable people. Key experts are overloaded—scaling starts to stall. New hires can’t “pick up” tasks, while veterans live in a constant “I don’t have time” mode.
What do we do, commander?
There are no easy answers. The antidote to growing pains is working with people.
Life after the “first success”
I’ve seen how mentors within a team nurture new stars after the departure of that original, high-energy core team. The initial scrappy drive gives way to planning and mentoring.
Help develop management skills in talented people.
1. Give feedback on difficult situations. 1. Share experience of navigating crises. 1. Explain “why we do this” and connect company goals to each person’s actions. 1. “Listen in the compartments”: pause the engines for a moment and listen—where it creaks, what might break. 1. Delegate authority—teach others to take responsibility.
And then (maybe) — we take off again. At escape velocity.
“To teach that skepticism and cynicism are cheap in life—that they are far easier and more boring than being able to wonder and to feel joy. To teach trust in the movements of another person’s soul. It is better to be mistaken in people twenty times than to treat everyone with suspicion.”
How to run past the traps of growth?
I help leaders of fast-growing companies develop management skills, build culture, and prepare teams for scaling.
👉 Learn more about mentoring for growth leaders
