The Hidden Cost of Scaling Too Fast (and What to Do About It)
The classic scale-up challenge looks like this:
You’ve got some funding. You’re spending it — maybe a little too fast. Burn rate is creeping up. Investors want results.
So what do you do?
The knee-jerk reaction is to remove every blocker to sales. Say yes to everything. Push the team to close as many deals as possible. Fast.
Which… isn’t necessarily wrong. But you need to be very aware of the delivery debt you’re creating.
One of my clients was in this exact spot.
They had a lean, well-oiled delivery system. Efficient, effective, working beautifully.
Then came the growth push. New funding. A bunch of new sales hires.
Suddenly, sales were getting stuck because delivery couldn’t move fast enough to keep up.
So leadership said: “Sales can say yes to anything. Delivery will figure it out.”
Not an unusual move. But also not a sustainable one — especially when your delivery team is already stretched thin.
Here’s the tension:
- If you over-hire in delivery, you end up with idle capacity.
- If you under-invest in delivery, you can’t actually deliver what you sell.
In this case, the team powered through their peak season — working ridiculous hours, blowing past budgets, juggling too many projects at once. They’re excellent at what they do, but it’s a minor miracle they didn’t drop the ball completely.
When I stepped in, one of the first things I noticed was that no one was tracking delivery spend properly. There was some loose tracking, but nowhere near what’s needed to understand project margin.
And look, maybe that’s okay in the early growth phase. Revenue is coming in. Clients are signing. The focus is on expansion.
But there has to be a point — clearly defined — where you stop, take stock, and rebuild the operational structure that can support this new level of scale.
If you don’t, one of three things will happen:
- Delivery drops the ball. A major client leaves.
- Margins evaporate. Growth becomes unprofitable.
- Your best people — the ones holding everything together with duct tape and deep knowledge — burn out and leave.
Honestly, that last one is the most expensive and hardest to fix.
So if you’re in that “growth but messy” phase:
Yes, drive revenue. Yes, make sales easier.
But carve out time now to plan your operational review.
It doesn’t have to be a full process overhaul overnight. Start small. Tackle the biggest friction points. Build some automation. Track your numbers. Reduce chaos bit by bit.
This is where bringing in someone operational — even part-time — can make a huge difference. While the business runs hard in one direction, they can quietly start laying the track underneath.
And above all: look after your people.
The ones keeping it all running today are the ones you’ll need most tomorrow.
