There comes a time in the growth of a company when you need to get serious about bolstering your management ranks.
Small companies typically don’t require a lot of formal leadership beyond a CEO, but by the time you’ve hit the 25-employee mark, you’re going to need a more entrenched network of leadership. By the time you’ve got 100 employees on the payroll a deeper structure of leadership is imperative.
But how do you develop your managerial staff as you grow? There are two important aspects to this: evaluating your current staff and bringing in the right new employees.
Evaluating your current staff
It’s important to realize that it takes a pretty special employee to grow at the same pace as the company. Not everyone can continually adapt their role within a growing organization, and frankly, not everyone wants to.
So it’s crucial that you keep tabs on your current employees and see, are they actively working to stay relevant? Are their talents still suited to where the organization currently is? If the answer to either of these questions is no, it’s time to begin coaching or begin helping them to find other alternatives.
Sometimes individuals get stuck. They’ve been doing the same thing for too long and they fail to see that the company has changed. In those cases a simple solution is often performing some career coaching.
Finding the right new staff
On the other hand, some employees are simply better suited to work at bigger companies. The specialized roles, formal development and large groups are where they want to be. As you grow, take advantage of this and find some new people.
As a leader, it’s important to realize that organizational growth is transformative. The name on the building may not have changed, but the business definitely has. It’s important to make sure you’ve got the right people around you.