{"id":183,"date":"2026-06-26T09:20:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T09:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mbracehr.com\/Blog\/?p=183"},"modified":"2026-06-26T09:20:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T09:20:28","slug":"growing-pains-heres-what-helps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mbracehr.com\/Blog\/founders\/growing-pains-heres-what-helps\/","title":{"rendered":"Growing Pains? Here’s what helps"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There’s a moment every scaling business hits that nobody really warns you about.

The moment when goodwill stops being enough.

At the start everything works because everyone knows each other. The team is small. The founder is visible and present. Nobody needs a process because a quick conversation sorts everything out.

And then the business grows.

Suddenly there are disagreements over annual leave; who asked first, who approved what, because nobody kept a record. Someone’s absence pattern is becoming a problem but there’s no data to confirm it. Managers are handling people situations in completely different ways because nobody ever told them how it should work.

Cliques start forming. Departmental silos appear. The original team starts to feel threatened by new people coming in and trying to change everything.
Relationships that were rock solid start to fracture.

And everyone is clamouring for the founder’s time, but the founder simply can’t be as available as they used to be. The business won’t allow it. And the silence gets misinterpreted. People start wondering if something is wrong. If the founder is upset with them. If their position is secure.

The informal culture that felt like a superpower at fifteen people starts to feel like a liability at fifty.

And here’s what makes it harder.

There’s often a fierce reluctance to let go of the way things used to be. The early culture felt special. It felt like family. And moving to something more structured feels like a betrayal of that.

But here’s the truth.

Structure isn’t the enemy of culture. Done properly it’s what protects it.

The businesses that navigate this stage well aren’t the ones that hold onto informality the longest. They’re the ones that build the right foundations at the right time, with trusted, experienced people around the founder who know their areas and take the weight off so the founder can stay focused on where the business is going.

The ones that don’t, keep firefighting. And the fires keep getting bigger.

If you recognise yourself or your business in that, and things on the people side are starting to feel more chaotic or messy than they used to, congratulations! That means you’re growing!

But it also means you need someone to untangle things and set a clear path forward through the people areas of the business.

For an informal, confidential conversation, book a call with me here https:\/\/lnkd.in\/eYh7-w4i<\/a>. This is just the sort of stage I can help with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a moment every scaling business hits that nobody really warns you about. The moment when goodwill stops being enough. At the start everything works because everyone knows each other. The team is small. The founder is visible and present. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,36,35],"tags":[17,16,12,14,15,34,20],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-founders","category-growing-businesses","category-small-businesses","tag-culture","tag-founder-partnerships","tag-hr-for-growing-business","tag-hr-for-small-businesses","tag-hr-partner","tag-leadership","tag-small-businesses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbracehr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbracehr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbracehr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbracehr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbracehr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mbracehr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184,"href":"https:\/\/mbracehr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbracehr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbracehr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbracehr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}