Behaviour lag with growing or expanding companies

In many growing or expanding organisations, the capability to achieve things can grow quite quickly and people often rise to the challenge.  The real challenge, however, is on the organisation's exponential growth curve is not capability, rather it's behaviour. People are frequently promoted earlier in a growing or expanding environment which often creates a wonderful energy and buzz. However, there are often unseen risks if leadership and management behaviour is not invested in. This is when the 'lag' can appear because behaviour takes longer to mature than our ability 'to do' things.

Do you remember that first people management position?  

How unnerving it felt at the outset?  

How long it took to feel like you were doing the right things in the right way?  

This is different when we move into more senior positions, because "we feel it's the right time", we feel ready for this next challenge. Part of the difficulty is when we become so emerged in the demands of 'doing', we struggle to take protected time to understand 'how' we should approach things.,  Also, we feel we haven't the time to invest in ourselves or our people, which often leads to performance issues for ourselves or our people.

My team at High Impact Development continues to work across many varying organisations from start ups to the FTSE 500. It is surprisingly regular that we encounter this challenge and advise CEO's, MD's and business owners of the what is likely to lie ahead, but often our advice guidance is left unheeded until the cracks appear. Which is not too late but have the experience and capability to pick this up with you and support how you develop it internally.  Key indicators for the behaviour lag might be one or more of the following areas:

- The resignation of quality key people that were poorly or mismanaged

- Poor behaviour that is beginning to impact on organisational culture

- Leaders taken to beyond their behavioural capability, creating poor leadership habits (or promoted too soon “we think you’re ready")

- Team morale can dip significantly to the point where performance issues are obvious

Don't worry though!  A problem shared is often halved so feel free to contact me for an impartial and no obligation chat about any aspect regarding this area, I love to share experiences together with others.