In any tech organization, growth is the goal. You want to grow your customer base, build new features, scale systems, and more. But the pace that powers a company forward can also push its people to their limits.
I’ve seen the negative implications of a team scaling too fast – the culture thins out, systems start to wobble, and burnout creeps in. It’s a pattern that’s all too common in high-growth environments.
The issue is that we often treat scaling systems and scaling people as two separate initiatives. We over-invest in one and under-think the other. But successful and sustainable growth doesn’t work like that. People and platforms are connected, and everything else eventually breaks when they grow out of sync.
SVP for Engineering at Smartsheet.
Over the past few years, I’ve had the chance to build engineering teams from the ground up across the UK, Bulgaria, and India. Along the way, one thing that’s become clear is that it’s not about growing faster. Sustainable growth involves intentionally scaling your business and the systems, people, and processes that are essential to any tech company.
Having worked on expanding teams globally, we’ve had to ask ourselves: What does success look like? How do we grow without losing what made us great in the first place? How do we stay ahead of customer demand while ensuring our teams are set up for long-term success? These questions are at the core of effective growth.
Start with the right leaders
It starts with a simple but often overlooked truth that people are the most critical part of any scaling effort. When you’re building a team or office in a new region, it’s not just about headcount. The first few hires set the tone for everything that follows. They carry your values, add to your culture, teach you how to operate in the region, and become your ambassadors.
In many ways, they are the company in that region for the first 6-12 months. Choosing those early leaders is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. You want leaders who are energized and aligned with your mission and values.
Leaders who understand the local market and culture. And most importantly, leaders who are passionate about growing the region. It should be more than just a job; it should be their motivation.
To do this well, you must hold two truths at once: a clear set of organizational values that transcend borders and a deep respect for regional nuances. The right balance of global consistency with local context is the foundation of any high-performing team.
Be deliberate about hiring
Rapid expansion isn’t inherently problematic, but solely prioritizing speed can be detrimental. The most robust organizations don’t simply hire to overcome every obstacle. Instead, they establish processes and systems that facilitate enduring, sustainable growth.
In rapidly expanding environments, the urge to quickly grow teams can be strong. However, simply adding more people doesn’t always translate to increased progress. It’s crucial to consider team development before increasing headcount.
A more effective approach involves a deliberate onboarding process, maintaining clarity as teams expand, and establishing supportive structures for new members. A disorganized onboarding creates confusion and a negative initial impression, potentially leading to a cultural breakdown.
Sometimes, the wisest decision is to pause hiring and instead focus on addressing process inefficiencies, restructuring teams, or empowering existing leaders to develop.
Organizations and the systems they develop are not static; they are constantly evolving. A crucial leadership responsibility is to identify skill gaps within your teams, as different stages of growth necessitate varying skill sets. Promptly addressing these skill gaps will enable you and your teams to scale more effectively.
Empower your teams
Distributed teams thrive on trust. If every decision requires layers of approval, you’re not scaling; you’re just stalling with extra steps. What your team needs is autonomy.
But autonomy will only work when paired with clarity and psychological safety. People need to understand company goals and feel safe speaking up. They need to know they’re trusted to make decisions.
Micromanaging is unsustainable when you’re spread across time zones. Instead, we must focus on setting clear outcomes and enabling teams to get there in the ways that work best for them.
Culture doesn’t scale by accident. It has to be nurtured. There’s a lot of talk in the industry about “global culture,” but the reality is more nuanced. Yes, you need a set of company values everyone can rally around. However, you also have to understand and respect local cultures.
What motivates an engineer in London might not be the same as what motivates someone in Bengaluru. Strong leadership means knowing which principles are non-negotiable and where you can flex. If you want a cohesive global team, start by understanding those differences.
Communication becomes critical here, not just in the form of Slack messages or status updates, but also in how leaders show up. Are we listening as much as we’re talking? Are we building structures that encourage collaboration, not just across roles but across borders? Are we creating the kind of culture where feedback flows freely and people feel heard?
These are the questions that shape sustainable growth. They’re not always the ones that show up on a hiring roadmap or a sprint plan, but they determine whether your teams stay healthy, productive, and resilient over time.
Stay ahead of the curve
In the SaaS landscape, scaling is a continuous journey. As your customer base expands, the systems you develop will ultimately serve millions of users. While this transformation isn’t instantaneous, you’ll observe that once you achieve a certain scale, your scaling requirements will accelerate exponentially.
To scale with customer demand, you must anticipate their evolving needs. It’s not about scaling with customers; it’s about you having the foresight to build systems that are already several steps ahead of today’s usage.
There are two key rules I follow to stay ahead of the curve:
1. Build for tenfold growth
If you’re only planning for the next phase of growth, you might hit the wall when customer demand outpaces your tech. Your systems will get stressed. Support tickets will pile up, and everyone will scramble.
This will stagnate your growth, as you will be playing catch-up vs planning for the future, and worse, you’ll lose customer trust. You need to proactively keep an eye on your system usage and, most importantly, understand your growth trends so that you can make sure that you are scaling beyond them. This will be an ongoing process.
2. Everything breaks at scale
Even with the best laid system architectures, systems will break at scale. So you and your teams have to be prepared. Have mechanisms set when such failures happen so you can mitigate the impact faster.
This mindset doesn’t just protect your systems, but it also protects your people. When systems fail, people pay the price, working longer hours or doing repetitive work.
There’s no perfect playbook for scaling teams, as every company’s journey is different. But if there’s one principle I’ve found to be universal, it is to scale with intention.
What really matters as you grow isn’t how fast you move or how much you invest. It’s whether you stay grounded in what made your team strong to begin with. Growth brings pressure and change, but it should also create space – space for culture to evolve, for new leaders to step forward, and for teams to grow with clarity and care.
Real scale, the kind that lasts, isn’t just about getting bigger. It’s about getting better together.
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