Preparing for Accelerated Growth

When companies experience growth, CEOs are faced with a lot of first-time decisions for which there are often no guidelines. Frequently, companies push forward to achieve growth, yet do not give much thought on “how” they want to grow. To avoid the pitfalls of accelerated growth, consider the following:

Deliberate Onboarding

Frequently with rapid growth comes the need to onboard new hires. Onboarding numerous hires in a short time frame has its own set of challenges. It may be difficult to find the people you need because the skill set you are seeking is highly competitive. Yet, compromising on your hires can lead to disastrous results.

Next Jump, an e-commerce company that handles loyalty programs for companies, survived the pains of rapid growth and now makes it their business to share lessons learned from their experience. Next Jump CEO, Charlie Kim, openly describes a time when he needed to recruit and hire lots of engineers. It was when competition for engineers between top technology companies was very tight. Next Jump was looking for the smartest, most driven, competitive engineers. What they ended up with is what Kim refers to in his book "An Everyone Culture" as brilliant jerks...continue