Growing Without Increasing Complexity at the Same Rate
Growth requires more than increasing sales and headcount. The management structure must evolve to support expansion without creating dependency and loss of control.
BUSINESS GROWTH
Growing means increasing the capacity to serve the market. But within the company, growth also means coordinating more people, activities, information and decisions. When this complexity increases faster than management capacity, what once worked simply can begin to produce delays, rework, concentrated decision-making and loss of visibility.
Zook and Allen (2016), writing in Harvard Business Review, describe what is known as the growth paradox: expansion can create internal and external complexity and, when that complexity accumulates, decision-making processes can become more difficult. The issue is not to eliminate complexity, but to develop the capacity to manage it.
One response lies in clarity of responsibilities. As an organisation grows, it becomes less effective to depend on one person who knows all the answers. Recent research on decision rights shows that delegation does not simply mean transferring authority: it is necessary to define who decides, who participates, who executes and how information flows (GREER; JORDAN; SYTCH, 2026).
Another response lies in processes. Processes do not exist merely to produce documents. They allow critical activities to be performed with sufficient predictability so that the organisation does not have to reinvent them each time they occur. The literature on organisational routines treats them as components of organisational capability and as elements that can also be modified when the company changes (BECKER et al., 2005).
This does not mean creating dozens of procedures. Excessive formalisation can also generate cost. The point is to identify which activities are critical, which depend excessively on individual knowledge and which present a greater risk of inconsistency as volume increases.
The third dimension is information. A growing company needs to understand not only the final result, but also what produces it, where deviations arise and which parts of the operation create constraints. Indicators are useful when they turn information into monitoring and action; the number of indicators, by itself, does not create management capacity.
In 2025, McKinsey updated its research on operating model redesign based on responses from 2,000 executives. Themes associated with performance included alignment among leaders, redesign of essential processes, investment in people and support for a high-performance culture (WEDDLE et al., 2025). Growing consistently, therefore, does not mean making the company more bureaucratic, but increasing its ability to coordinate what has become larger and more complex.
References
ZOOK, Chris; ALLEN, James. Getting growth back at your company. Harvard Business Review, 2016. Available at: https://hbr.org/podcast/2016/06/getting-growth-back-at-your-company. Accessed: 02 July 2025.
GREER, Lindy; JORDAN, Jennifer; SYTCH, Maxim. What companies get wrong about decision rights. Harvard Business Review, July/Aug. 2026. Available at: https://hbr.org/2026/07/what-companies-get-wrong-about-decision-rights. Accessed: 02 July 2025.
BECKER, Markus C.; LAZARIC, Nathalie; NELSON, Richard R.; WINTER, Sidney G. Applying organizational routines in understanding organizational change. Industrial and Corporate Change, v. 14, n. 5, p. 775–791, 2005. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/dth071.
WEDDLE, Brooke et al. The new rules for getting your operating model redesign right. McKinsey & Company, 25 June 2025. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organization/our-insights/the-new-rules-for-getting-your-operating-model-redesign-right. Accessed: 02 July 2025.