This is the beginning of a series of articles about the challenges of growing an organization. I’m writing them to share some principles that I’ve derived from my own experience, as well as many valuable discussions with friends and colleagues, about helping companies grow from being quite small (say, 1-50 employees) to medium-sized (100-500).
There are many different ways to categorize companies by size, and not everyone agrees with me that different organizations tend to face certain similar problems as they grow, based on the number of employees. In any case, hopefully we can all agree that human systems are mind-bogglingly complex entities, and any two organizations will have many important differences—such as their culture and market situation—which influence their growth and development.
For this reason, I believe there are few if any hard and fast rules, and organizational design patterns can be difficult to translate from one organization to another. One organization’s solution can be another’s problem. Even when there is a perfect fit, the process of organization change is a feat unto itself, one about which many books have been written.
Even so, I think there is much to be learned by comparing different organizations, and much inspiration to be found in their successes and failures. Two organizations merit specific mention here, as sources of inspiration for me: Canonical, where I worked as Ubuntu CTO from near inception to when it reached nearly 500 people, and Heroku, where I currently serve as VP Engineering as it grows beyond 100 people.
