How to prepare for the rapid growth of your company

Problem

We did not have a formal support structure in place, which set us back in a very stressful way. There was a painful period where the entire company was taking on support calls throughout the entire day and not getting any work done. The bottom line was that we were not prepared for the type of rapid growth the company was undertaking at the time.

Actions taken

As we grew, the requirement for a management structure became more apparent. We quickly leveraged a pool of talent through several hires that we already had in place as support agents. They allowed us to tap into this vast resource of prowess from their company's support talent. We wanted to hire people that matched the initial people we had. We also knew that the 10 new people we were going to hire had to be comfortable with ambiguity where there was not a lot of documentation. Knowing this, we set out looking for people in both large and small companies, who were self-starters, that could easily take on their own responsibility. For us, the proper assessment of a self-starter holds no bias as to whether they had previously belonged to a small or large company. It does, however, seek out individuals who are unsatisfied and therefore seeking improvement. Preferring troublemakers to those who just wait around for orders to follow. You want to find the right type of talent where they are generalists early on and not specialists.

Lessons learned

• You can't prepare for this time of growth and you have to deal with it with an all hands on deck attitude.
• Hiring self-starters will help carry you and your organization for the next several years to come. They will be able to punch above their own weight so to speak, and that is what the early phase of your company's career demands.
• It is not always smart to hire someone from a big company to fill a management role. Even though they may possess a lot of skill, it is important to identify when they joined that organization. If most of the processes and tools had already been defined when they joined, they will not be comfortable jumping into a growing company, simply because they do not have that type of experience.
• If and when your company pivots, you want someone who is naturally smart and adjustable based on where ever it is the company may decide to go.