Growth hurts. We don’t like the complexity. Our company used to be simpler but now has more people and more moving parts. We spend time on things–bureaucratic things!–that we never needed to spend time on before. Issues that used to be unnoticeable or at least manageable become painful. Everyone gives more but we’re getting burnt out.
What are our choices? We can press ahead and justify the losses as necessary to growth. Or we can shrink back down to something that we can comfortably handle. The former is very risky. The latter is also risky as it teeters on the edge between “this is a good life” and bitter disappointment.
Of course, there is always another way. We can change our role. We can choose to be the ones whose job it is to wrestle these complexities. We would then build and enroll the team into an environment–that is, the right direction, people, systems, innovation, and rewards–that lets us grow happily and sustainably.
In your corner,
Michael
PS: Taking this choice means we would probably stop doing (some) work we are used to and good at. We’d take on unfamiliar tasks. Getting traction will take more time than expected. And impostor syndrome could rear its ugly head. With this in mind, we can nonetheless succeed one step at a time. It often helps to use a good roadmap and get a thinking partner.
Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash