Growth ≠ Chaos: 4 Strategies to Keep Your Team Aligned

We were onboarding 50 new hires in under three weeks. Slack was chaos, details were slipping through the cracks, and no one knew who was responsible for what. That’s when it hit us - growth wasn’t the issue. Clarity was.

We live in an era of intense speed. Growth targets double, teams scale overnight, and ‘we needed that yesterday’ is a familiar refrain. But as businesses sprint forward, something essential often gets left behind: clarity.

Research has shown that companies who double in size within 12 months may experience a decline in team alignment or cultural cohesion. 

When people are hired fast without clear communication of values and expectations, teams may experience an increase in role ambiguity. In response, employees may begin creating informal roles or decision making channels to combat a lag between growth and company structure. 

Given this, here are four strategies to keep your teams on track as your company's growth skyrockets. 

Define Roles with Deliverables, Not Job Titles

A VP I worked with recently inherited a team after a reorg. She realized that half her team thought they owned strategy, and the other half thought they were executing it. No one was wrong, but no one was aligned. So she mapped everyone’s core deliverables by quarter and got feedback from each team member. Within weeks, duplicate work dropped and collaboration improved.

Managers must have a clear vision and strategy for the core deliverables each team - and team member -  is responsible for delivering. 

Start with three key questions to set clear expectations.

• What core deliverables are we responsible for in the next 6 months? 

• What must this person produce each quarter to aid in us reaching our goals? 

• Where do I see overlap or dropped balls? 

But it’s not enough for the manager to answer these questions, they must also communicate them to their teams, with clear expectations and tangible desired outcomes. 

Leaders who take the time to clarify scope, name confusion or reassign misaligned work should be acknowledged and held up as a positive example. 

Role clarity is a performance enabler. 

Make the Invisible Visible: Operationalize Clarity

As companies scale, context no longer travels through osmosis. People stop bumping into each other in the hallways and instead, decisions are made in Slack channels and critical knowledge gets siloed. 

A culture of explicit communication ensures alignment, speed and psychological safety - without the need to hyperfocus on process. 

Communication isn’t a side project but rather, it should be embedded into how your team operates. Decisions should be documented, agendas and meeting notes should be expected and invisible logic must be made visible. How you came to a decision matters just as much as the decision you made. 

During a recent meeting, I observed a manager who ended our meeting by saying “where might clarity be needed?” This one simple question allowed the team space to call out any remaining questions or gaps and helped land the decision before the meeting was over. 

You don’t need a formal framework to build clarity - you need consistent behaviors and embedded norms that are practiced daily. 

Hire for Today - and Tomorrow

“We need to hire 400 people before the end of the year.” If you’ve heard a version of this statement, you well know the pressure to fill a need to support business growth. 

But before you fill those roles, managers must first understand their hiring plans and how they support the overall workload of the team. 

Writing a clear job description is table stakes, but being able to explain what success will look like in 90 days will help ensure those 400 people are clear on their objectives from day one. 

If roles and needs are ever evolving, you might try a test and learn approach by leaning on contingent worker support for project-based needs. 

Build systems to protect against Burnout 

As business scales and ambiguity becomes more pervasive, the risk of burnout soars. For a company to thrive, growth is inevitable. Burnout doesn’t have to be. 

I’m hiding behind my hands as I type this knowing how many founders would disagree with me, but rest is ok. Even welcomed. New ideas and energy come from the ability to sit in silence or spend time in nature. Stop putting off that walk you’ve been intending to take. Get outside and let the creativity flow. 

I once worked with an engineer named Luis who consistently delivered ahead of schedule. Instead of recognition, he got more work. When he quietly transferred to another team, leadership was shocked, but his exit had been in motion for months. His burnout wasn’t sudden. It was silent and slow, and entirely preventable.

We all know someone who’s been performance punished: rewarded for doing excellent work by being handed even more of it, often without added support, recognition, or compensation. Over time, this turns motivation into resentment and energy into exhaustion.

It's a quiet culture killer and it’s a preventable one.

As a leader, it can be tempting - and easy - to dole out more and more assignments to your top performers, but the next time you find yourself pulled to do this, stop. 

It’s not easy but it is possible to break this cycle. Take stock of your team and identify ways to redistribute tasks to find a more balanced workload across your team. If this feels impossible, it may be time to complete a talent assessment to determine if you have the right people in the right roles. 

Respecting the time - both on and off the clock - of your employees may keep them in their role longer and maintain their positions as ‘high performing’. 

And if you see burnout indicators on your team, such as 1.) flagging energy levels, 2.) seeming disinterest, 3.) increased absenteeism, or 4.) even exhaustion, it’s time for a check in. 

Support your employees by encouraging time off, helping them set manageable boundaries, and reiterating the importance of ongoing, open lines of communication. 

When companies grow, it’s an opportunity to not only propel your offering into the future, but also to solidify the foundations of your team to maintain your footing. Taking the actions above can help mitigate performance lags due to role ambiguity and keep everyone tracking toward the same goals.

Scaling fast doesn’t have to mean sacrificing alignment. Growth can be both ambitious and human-centered if you're willing to lead with intention.