THAT IS HOW WE GOT HERE

Over the years, I’ve seen what I’ve termed, “Scale-ure”, handicap organizations and, in some cases, grind them to a halt. Some may not consider it fortunate to experience Scale-ure early in their careers, but, for me, it was a tough lesson that’s subsequently shaped my leadership. 

I started my career in banking and quickly became a top individual contributor,

winning sales contests, awards, and accolades. That success allowed me to take on increasing responsibilities and start leading teams. 

My career progressed rapidly. I started out leading a small team of five people, then a larger team of 8-10. During that time, while I was challenged to grow my people leadership

capabilities and become a better coach and mentor, I leaned heavily on my personal

production ability to generate results. I tended to be responsible for most of the big wins

and used my team to execute the day-to-day. I was ultimately the rainmaker, and the

team served as cogs in my production machine.

When was asked to lead a larger distributed team–20 people over two locations–the

pressure started to mount. I felt stressed all the time and it seemed no matter how hard

I worked, I could never quite close the gap. I had always been so successful and

regarded as a key talent and an emerging leader, so why was it different this time? If

anything, there was more opportunity, and I just couldn’t seem to capitalize.

As I searched for answers a blind spot came to light that completely reoriented my

leadership posture. Up to this point, I had leveraged my individual strengths to make up

for capability gaps in my team. If we needed more deposit dollars to hit our goal, I

scoured my network and returned with a $1-million check. If we were light on loans, I

sat in on client conversations, built debt consolidation worksheets, and helped close the

deal. That worked fine with five, eight, 10 people…but at 20+, my individual strengths just

couldn’t make up for the gaps in my team. If I wanted to continue winning, I had to move

from frontman to facilitator. Leading became less about me doing all the things and

instead was intently focused on enabling the team to get all the things done well.

I have seen this narrative play out in businesses looking to scale from their

entrepreneurial roots into an enterprise organization. The owners, founders, and

partners have built strong businesses by leveraging their networks, spearheading the

big wins, shouldering the tough decisions, and building a team around them to help

execute against their successes. Often, they are (or are viewed as) the smartest people

in the room, headstrong, and intently focused on what they need to do to develop the next

win. They value people who think, act, and respond like them, and tend to push aside

folks that bring a different perspective or ways of working. “This is how we got here”

rings in the hallways and boardroom. As they look to scale, they base their decision-making on the myth that doing more of what got them to this point will take them to the

next level.

Ultimately, just like I did, they hit a wall. The growth projections aren’t being hit,

pressure mounts, and morale falls. The investments they have made in the future state of

the business are not providing a return and in the worst cases are sucking the life and

cash out of what was once a profitable business. Even worse, because the people they

have surrounded themselves with think, act, and respond like them, there is little to no

insight to be gained on how to get back on track.

Hopefully, you are reading this before the school of hard knocks has started to teach

you a costly lesson in Scale-ure. Even if you are in the middle of the storm, it’s probably

not too late to reorient your leadership team and transform your organization to

effectively execute on your scale up plans. Continuing in our Scale-ure series, we will

explore the foundational elements of preparing to scale and provide insights and key

questions to answer along the way. Things like “Has the growth of the organization

outpaced the leadership capability I have in house?”, Where would I benefit from

experience and expertise to solve a problem”, and “Am I growing, maturing, or both?”

If you are wrestling with Scale-ure and want to connect, visit our website at

www.myvantagepoint.net and click on “Let’s Talk”.