Growing firms need enough structure to support performance without slowing the people closest to the work.
One of the biggest tests of a growing firm is whether it can get bigger without getting heavier.
Garver has seen significant growth over the last decade, and one thing becomes clear when organizations scale: growth creates complexity, and complexity creates a temptation to centralize control. Leaders add approvals, process, and oversight in the name of consistency. Some of that is necessary. But taken too far, it slows decisions and erodes the entrepreneurial culture that drove growth in the first place.
The irony is that autonomy is not a threat to growth. In many cases, it is the reason growth happened at all. Firms do not scale because a handful of executives make every smart decision themselves. They scale because capable people across the business know how to exercise both judgment and a bias toward action.
So as your firm grows, the goal should not be to tighten control every time complexity increases. Rather, the challenge is how to create enough structure to support performance without crushing initiative.
I believe striking this balance comes down to the following:
- Hire for judgment, not just competence. Autonomy only works if you trust the people holding it. Most firms are good at evaluating technical skill. Fewer are as intentional about hiring for judgment, ownership, and decision-making. But if your culture depends on people operating with independence, those qualities matter just as much as technical skills. You cannot build an autonomous organization by hiring people who need constant direction and then hoping they adapt.
- Use onboarding to make the culture real. Hiring is only the beginning. I have grown to appreciate the role HR plays. They are the front door of your culture, and their influence in shaping how new hires understand your firm cannot be overstated. If you want people to lead with ownership they need a clear understanding of their role, your expectations, and the kind of company they joined.
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Make the guardrails unmistakably clear. If you want people to behave with a bias toward action, they need to know where the boundaries are. What are the non-negotiables? What decisions, financial or otherwise, can they make on their own? What does success look like, not only in their individual role, but to the team and ultimately the organization?
Less successful organizations give people vague freedom and then act surprised when they cross a line no one clearly defined. Goals, expectations, procedures, and decision-making ability should be clear enough that people can move confidently without constantly checking over their shoulder.
Not everything should be left to individual decision-making and leaders should be honest about that too. Good standards create consistency and further build your culture, while bad ones create cynicism. -
Push decisions to the people closest to the work. One of the fastest ways to slow a growing firm is to pull too many decisions upward.
When every hiring decision, expense, client decision, or pursuit move has to move through layers of leadership, the organization gets slower, heavier, and less responsive. People stop taking initiative because they learn that initiative gets delayed, second-guessed, or overruled. -
Coach the behaviors you want others to adopt. Yes, some people will make bad decisions. That is part of running an organization committed to autonomy. But the answer is not to over-control the entire organization because of poor judgment from a few.
The answer is better leadership. Coach the behaviors you want to see. Address issues directly when people are not operating within the standard. Have the hard conversations early instead of writing a new rule that slows everyone else down.
Done well, autonomy means capable people are trusted to lead, and leaders stay close enough to coach, correct, and reinforce the standard.
Rapid growth makes all of this harder, but also more important. Because in the long run, firms that trust capable people to lead, and invest in growing the next generation of capable leaders, will outperform firms that manage initiative out of the system.
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Krysten Marshall serves as Director of Strategic Growth for Garver’s Water Business Line. Connect with her on LinkedIn. |