Gaps don’t get better with growth

The political season is upon us, and a big part of the narrative is about how things are going and the question, “Are we better off today than we were four years ago?” Many people will attempt to answer that question in the months ahead, and we’ll hear contrasting if not conflicting answers, sometimes citing the same data.

Maybe it’s me, but one of the themes I continue to encounter is growth. I’m sure it has something to do with the region we live and work in. I expect it will be further reinforced by focusing my work on healthy, growing organizations. But in the end, everyone I’m around seems to be challenged by the growth they’re experiencing or getting positioned for the growth they anticipate.

“Growing pains” is a term for a reason, and it doesn’t need explanation — only context. Growth stretches us and causes us to think and operate in new ways.

Growth brings new things that are now true that weren’t true before. Growth creates stress. One example of stress could be handling a new opportunity in an area where we may be the best in the world. Here, it’s about continuing to deliver at a standard we’re used to at a different volume or frequency. I’d argue that’s the best case.

In my experience, growth is far more the norm. It exposes gaps that our previous scale could live with or maybe weren’t even aware of. The gaps could be omissions, things that did not exist. Generally, these are more straightforward in identifying and addressing these needs.

The gaps could also form a way of working that needs to be revised by the demands growth brings. That is often much more challenging to deal with. For one reason, what got us here has worked (to this point). In our minds, it is proven. We

like it, and we’ve mastered it. Why would we change? A second reason is that while our previous way of working was not ideal, we were able to cope with that lack of infrastructure or execution. Maybe our lack of scale didn’t justify that we do anything about it. But growth changes that. Coping can no longer be an option, and the cost of doing so is too great to live with.

What I’m seeing from clients is this second dilemma. When the growth has already arrived and we’re trying to keep up,

it’s hard to find the time to address the gap. When it’s in preparation for growth, it doesn’t feel as urgent. When it’s out there in the future somewhere, we’re dealing with a certain amount of unknowns and assumptions. I was on a call recently with an operations leader, working through identified gaps, when I commented to her that “gaps don’t get better with growth.” The implication is that as hard as it is to address gaps now in terms of time, cost or effort, it will only take more time, cost and effort if one continues to defer action.

Quality guru W. Edwards Deming said, “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” Growth puts pressure on this reality in new ways, especially when the circumstances are primarily favorable as they tend to be with growth. We have to confront the fact that gaps generally don’t address themselves. So the question for leaders quickly becomes, at what point will we choose to do what’s necessary to address the gap that maximizes growth? And that is at the point when leaders lead.

Chuck Hyde is the founder of C3 Advisors, a Northwest Arkansas firm focused on executive development and talent optimization. He can be reached at c3adv.com. The opinions expressed are those of the author.