How to scale a company?

Problem

Stripe has grown quite quickly in recent years, and this growth resulted in the organizational structure no longer being suitable. The ownership of projects was not clear, work was not delivered on time, and there was a lack of clear boundaries for each employee's tasks. In order to adapt to this growth, some measures were progressively implemented: roles were slightly redefined, the company policy on holidays changed (fixed dates instead of flexible dates), some new processes were implemented etc. However these progressive changes started to irritate people, who in response, started complaining about this way of reorganizing things.

Actions taken

I understood that our approach had been wrong because we hadn't associated people enough in these changes, and because we didn't have an end-to-end approach. We tried to work on a longer. My focus was on talking to people, to enable them to assimilate to the new structure of the organization more smoothly. I also gathered feedback from employees, and prepared future managers for their upcoming positions.

Lessons learned

It is important to keep in mind that the organizational structure of a startup has to change as the company grows. Of course, the company loses some flexibility, and as a manager, you have to make some compromises between your employee's expectations and what's in the best interest of the company. I think that for reorganization processes, the most important thing is to implement the process smoothly and to make sure you talk with people around you a lot, so that they feel involved in these changes.