With success comes growth, and with growth comes the need to adapt. While you want to retain the essence of whatever’s worked for you to this point, there are simply some things that work on the small scale that don’t when you make the transition into a bigger business. One of those things is leadership style, and these tips can help you adapt to growth while retaining what works.
Direct vs. Indirect Management
When your team is made up of just a few people, forging a personal connection with everyone isn’t just a nice touch; it’s practically necessary. If your team is going to get anywhere, you have to share a solid bond. But there’s a reason why “One for all, and all for one!” works well for The Three Musketeers but not for huge multinational corporations.
While teamwork is still essential, it’s simply impossible to be that invested in every person when that means hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of people. As your company grows, therefore, it becomes important that you learn how to delegate and take a more indirect, big picture approach.
Different Employee-Boss Attitudes
Again, when it’s a company of five and everyone knows each other, it’s easy for a casual, even familial atmosphere to develop. When it’s not five but five thousand, however, the sheer scope of your management task once again necessitates change.
Unspoken agreements need to evolve into official company policies so nobody’s uncertain of what’s allowed and what’s not. Since you’ll be doing more meetings with higher-ups and those from other companies, your relationships with your employees will likewise be more distant and formal.
Self-Reliance vs. Isolation
With this more formalized and stratified company structure, it might seem easy and even natural to adopt the idea that everyone should just look out for themselves. With a company that big, there’s no time for constant conferences or coddling.
However, taking this too far can create a company culture that’s harsh and unpleasant at best and toxic and inefficient at worst. There’s an enormous difference between valuing self-reliance and making people feel isolated. Everyone needs help sometimes, and making employees afraid to ask for it will simply lead to them making mistakes and being too timid to own up to them, making things worse in the process.
The key here is to create small-scale versions of what you had at the start and build self-reliant teams where individual members can support one another. That way, employees still have someone to ask for help when uncertain without higher ups constantly being bombarded with basic questions.
The shift from a small business to a big one is likewise immense, but if you work it right, you should be able to enjoy the best of both worlds.