Growth Changes What a Business Needs From Its Leaders

Consider an MSP generating $20 million in revenue with plans to double in size. At $20 million, the Service Delivery leader may know every major client, stay close to day-to-day operations and personally step into escalations. That leader may have played an enormous role in building the organization.

But what happens as the company doubles? The role may require managing through multiple layers of leadership, creating greater financial and operational visibility, improving capacity planning, standardizing delivery across teams or locations, and spending significantly less time personally solving individual client issues. The same evolution happens across other functions.

A Sales leader who has been highly successful personally driving revenue may eventually need to build a repeatable sales engine with defined processes, management infrastructure, accountability and forecasting discipline. A Finance leader who has successfully managed accounting, reporting and cash flow may need to evolve into a more strategic partner capable of supporting acquisitions, integration, forecasting and increasingly complex business decisions. An Operations leader who once managed much of the business through personal knowledge and relationships may need to build systems and management structures that allow the organization to scale beyond them.

The people who helped build the business are often enormously valuable. The question is whether their roles, capabilities and support structures are evolving as quickly as the organization itself.