One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: The Growth Pain Every CEO Hits

One step forward and two steps back.

There's a moment every CEO hits, and it's hard to see it coming.

You've built something great. You've got customers, a growing team and a pipeline of growth. Maybe it happened fast, maybe it took years, it doesn't matter. By any external measure, you're winning.

And yet you feel like you're taking one step forward and two steps back.

I know this moment because I lived it and I see it every day working with CEOs.

When you could wrap your arms around it

In the early days, you're across everything. You're in most of the conversations. Your team is small and tight, and they all get it, the culture, the mission, what you're actually trying to build. You don't have to explain yourself twice.

Then the company grows past the point where one person (or one executive team) can hold it all.

You can't be across everything anymore. You're relying on other people to interpret what you mean, and to make the decisions you would have made if you'd been there. A business that has been built on your skills, your instincts and a great idea hits a point where there is just not enough of you to go around anymore.

Every organisation hits this. I don't care what industry, what size, what growth curve got you there.

I often hear this stage referred to a growing pains, frayed edges where customers are a little concerned about lack of responsiveness, or delivery timelines have blown out, or the margin is eroding without an obvious why… the fact is if you don’t fix it, it will stop your growth, or make it less profitable or work you and your direct team to the point of exhaustion.

Not why we signed up for the role.

What it cost me

We grew fast. By the time I really felt this, we were around 2,000 people, with contracts worth tens of millions of dollars running through the business. I was on the precipice of stepping into the CEO role and we had our worst ever month of profit (or lack of). All it took was one major contract, low margin at the best of times, to go slightly off rails and the impact on the company bottom line was enormous. It was a genuine look in the mirror moment for our business and our shareholder.

We'd been so focused on the future, the next strategy, the next growth move, that we had taken our eye off what the organisation needed today. The basics. The structure that actually lets a business scale successfully, not just get bigger.

Growth without structure feels like you are always sprinting to catch up and you've got 15 plates spinning in the air. You might have one or two super reliable team members but they are stretched and juggling the other 15 plates.

Like most CEOs, I felt the immediate pull of what needed to be fixed (hands up a CEO who doesn’t have a looong list). At the time I was part of a CEO peer networking group and a speaker connected a dot for me that as an organisation we had missed. Early on we had gone down the rabbit hole of ISO quality accreditation processes. They work, but only if you actually define the right processes. We, on the other hand, were stopping the business once a year to check if our file names were appropriate!!! Arghhhhh. I will forever be grateful for that session, coupled with our scaling issues right at the point some of the wheels were literally falling off.

It set an idea in motion that became the foundation of our growth - scaling profitably from 2,000 to 6,500 employees globally and, perhaps even more importantly, doing it without being in the heavy lifting day to day.

So I went back to first principles. I needed to identify the things that actually made us successful as a business, the processes that led to commercial success , the actual how behind the business. Then I needed to work out how to translate it so it became scalable and repeatable. Together with my team we found the “secret sauce” and wrote it down. We then trained everyone and created a process of healthchecks and ongoing education so I never had to repeat myself again.

If this is sounding like bliss - it genuinely was. I could talk on this topic for hours as it was the unlock to knowing both that we were on track for success, and that I could focus on the work only I as CEO could genuinely do.

"I just know"

I was talking to a CEO the other day who's in this right now.

Same shift I went through, trying to move from being in the day-to-day of every part of the business, to actually having room to work on it instead. For him this represents fulfilling a legacy and succession strategy.

We were talking about how to do it..

He said something I hear a lot. He just knows when to go check something. A margin that looks a bit off. A part of the business he needs to look at. He can't tell you the trigger, he just knows to go and look.

So I asked him - how do you know?

He couldn't answer it. Not because he didn't have the instinct. He clearly did. He just couldn't break it down into anything he could hand to someone else. So we started there.

That's the actual problem. Not the instinct. The fact that it only lives in his head. If he can't explain it, he can't teach it. And if he can't teach it, the business only ever runs as far as he's physically able to reach.

This takes time but it is the single best investment you will ever make in your own leadership and in the sustainability of your organisation.

Why this one's hard, if you built the thing yourself

If you're a founder or early stage CEO, this shift genuinely cramps your style.

You built the business on speed and innovation. Being asked to slow down feels like you’ve got one hand behind your back. You can ignore it, but down the track it will mean you will need TEN hands OR your time will be spent fixing and not focused on the innovation, growth and strategy you love.

Where to start

The balance is tricky. How do you keep enough innovation and flex and responsiveness so you don’t lose what you love whilst adding in just the right amount of structure to make the future more predictable.

Don't try to write the whole playbook. That's how this stalls before it starts.

Sit back and think about what you wish your team would just do, without asking you first. That's your clue. Whatever's sitting behind that wish is something you already know how to do, you've just never broken it down into the how.

• Can you list off the top 10 critical moving parts of your business that make it tick.

• How do you know it’s healthy?

• What parts feel the most friction and

• Where are you getting pulled into the detail too often.

I turned this work into a program called Centre of Excellence. It helped me see at a glance any area of the business heading off track and I could then be intentional about diving into the detail - versus being dragged there because something was wrong. This one change, this investment in structure and systems enabled the business to successfully scale to 6,500 employees globally.

If you're mid-spin right now, that's the work.

I love to share the how behind building the Centre of Excellence and I offer 3 sessions every month. Come and let's work out where to start. Link to chat.

I also suggest you look at our Diagnostic CEO Scorecard to get insights into potential growth areas of focus.