Organizational Growing Pains | Part 2
There’s a stage in an organization’s growth when being able to do a little bit of everything is an enormous advantage. People pitch in wherever they’re needed, responsibilities are flexible, and everyone has a reasonably good understanding of what’s happening across the organization.
It’s often one of the things people love most about working in a smaller team. Decisions happen quickly, collaboration feels natural, and nobody is particularly concerned about whether something falls neatly within their job description.
Until one day, those same ways of working start creating friction.
Perhaps two people are doing essentially the same work without realizing it. Maybe an important responsibility has fallen through the cracks because everyone assumed someone else was handling it. Or perhaps the organization has reached a size where keeping everyone informed about everything is no longer practical.
The interesting part is that nobody necessarily did anything wrong. The organization simply evolved, and the way people work together hasn’t quite caught up.
When organic growth becomes organizational complexity
Most organizations don’t set out to create inefficient processes or confusing roles. Their ways of working develop in response to the challenges and opportunities in front of them.
Someone takes on an additional responsibility because they have the capacity or the expertise. Another person creates a spreadsheet to keep track of something that wasn’t previously being monitored. A manager begins reviewing decisions that used to be made informally because the consequences have become more significant.
Over time, these small adjustments accumulate. They may continue to serve the organization well, or they may create overlapping responsibilities, unnecessary dependencies and processes that no longer make much sense.
What’s particularly interesting is how rarely these arrangements are revisited. People continue doing things a certain way because that’s how they’ve always been done, even when the original reason no longer exists.
And when employees begin expressing frustration about workloads, communication or accountability, the conversation often turns immediately to whether the organization needs more people.
Sometimes it does. But before adding positions or management layers, I’d want to understand how the existing work is actually being performed.
Start with the work, not the org chart
When we work with organizations experiencing these kinds of growing pains, one of the first things we often explore is the relationship between people’s formal responsibilities and the work that fills their days.
A job description can tell us what someone was hired to do. It doesn’t necessarily tell us what they’re actually doing.
Responsibilities evolve, particularly in smaller organizations where employees frequently take on additional work as needs emerge. Some of that evolution is healthy and should be encouraged. People discover strengths, develop new capabilities and contribute in ways nobody anticipated when their positions were created.
But over time, we may discover that several employees are performing similar activities, critical responsibilities aren’t clearly assigned, or people are spending a surprising amount of time on work that could be organized more effectively.
This is where a role and responsibility audit can be useful.
Rather than beginning with assumptions about what the organization should look like, we ask people to describe the work they actually do. What takes up their time? Which decisions are they making? Where do they need input or approval from others? What processes create friction, and where does collaboration work particularly well?
Depending on the size and nature of the organization, we might use surveys, interviews, observation or a combination of approaches. A conversation with someone about a typical week can reveal things that would never appear on an organizational chart.
Just as importantly, we’re interested in people’s strengths, interests and experiences. Organizational design isn’t simply an exercise in distributing tasks as efficiently as possible. It’s also an opportunity to understand how people can contribute most effectively.
More structure isn’t always the answer
I think there’s a tendency to assume that as organizations grow, they inevitably need greater specialization, more formal processes and increasingly defined reporting relationships.
Sometimes that’s true. But it isn’t a universal rule.
Consider two organizations of roughly the same size. One operates virtually, with employees working flexible hours and considerable independence. The other delivers services through a physical location, with tightly coordinated schedules and operational activities that depend on people being available at particular times.
They may have similar staffing levels and budgets, but the structures that support their work could look quite different.
The same applies to collaboration. Some teams genuinely need a high degree of cross-functional coordination to achieve their objectives. Others perform relatively independent work and may gain little from additional meetings, shared processes or elaborate coordination mechanisms.
The right amount of structure depends on the work, the people doing it, and the culture the organization wants to sustain.
That’s why I’m cautious about importing organizational models simply because they’ve worked somewhere else. What creates clarity and efficiency in one environment can become unnecessary bureaucracy in another.
The objective is to understand what the organization needs now, while maintaining enough flexibility to evolve as circumstances change.
Flexibility still needs a foundation
Of course, there are limits to how informal an organization can remain, particularly as responsibilities become more specialized.
One area I pay attention to is operational resilience. In small and medium-sized organizations, having people who can cover one another’s essential responsibilities isn’t necessarily duplication or inefficiency. It’s often good organizational design.
If one person’s vacation brings an important process to a standstill, or employees feel unable to take time away because nobody else understands their work, something probably needs attention.
This doesn’t mean everyone should know how to do everything. It means organizations should understand which activities are critical, where knowledge is concentrated, and what level of redundancy is appropriate to keep things functioning.
The same principle applies to decision-making. Flexible roles can work very well when people have a shared understanding of who is responsible for outcomes, where authority sits, and when collaboration is necessary.
Without that clarity, flexibility can gradually become ambiguity.
And ambiguity tends to create its own work: extra meetings, repeated conversations, unnecessary approvals, and the occasional scramble to establish who was supposed to do what.
Designing around the organization you’ve become
One of the most useful questions an organization can ask as it grows is whether its current ways of working are still serving its purpose.
That’s a different question from whether the organizational chart looks right.
It invites us to examine how decisions are made, how work moves between people, where responsibilities overlap, and whether the organization’s processes are helping or hindering performance.
It also creates an opportunity to consider the culture we want to preserve. If flexibility, autonomy and collaboration have been important parts of the organization’s identity, we shouldn’t casually sacrifice them in the name of efficiency. Instead, we should explore what kinds of structure might actually protect those qualities as the organization becomes more complex.
Sometimes the solution is a clearer division of responsibilities. Sometimes it’s better documentation, shared processes, cross-training or more deliberate decision-making authority. Occasionally, it really is time for an additional position or a different reporting structure.
And sometimes, after doing the work to understand the organization, we discover that certain informal practices are worth keeping exactly as they are.
Organizational effectiveness isn’t about making everything more structured. It’s about being intentional about how the work gets done.
A question worth considering
If your organization has grown considerably over the past few years, when was the last time you took a meaningful look at how work is actually distributed?
Not just what appears in job descriptions or on the organizational chart, but what people are doing every day, where their time is going, and how effectively they’re able to work together.
You may discover that your current approach is serving you remarkably well. Or you may find that some of the practices that helped your organization grow are now making it harder to move forward.
Either way, understanding how you work today is a pretty good place to start.
Let’s keep the conversation going.
If your organization has grown beyond its original ways of working, we can help you understand where responsibilities, processes and decision-making may need to evolve. Sometimes the most valuable first step is simply getting a clearer picture of how things work today.
Stay curious. Grow with intention.
Erin Patchell
Principal and Senior Advisor | Positivist Group
