Why growing organizations become harder to understand
One of the things we’ve noticed over the years is that healthy organizations naturally become more difficult to understand.
At first, that seems backwards. Growth is usually a sign that things are going well. New products are introduced because customers have new needs. Services expand because new opportunities emerge. Teams grow because there’s more work to do. Every decision has a purpose, and each one helps move the organization forward.
The complexity isn’t the problem. It’s what happens to understanding along the way.
In the early days, everyone shares a similar picture of the business. Founders understand every decision because they made them. Early employees understand the story because they helped write it. Products, services, customers, and values all feel connected because they’ve grown together.
Over time, that shared understanding begins to drift. Leadership still sees how everything fits together because they’ve lived the journey. Customers haven’t. New employees haven’t. Partners, investors, and even long-time clients experience the organization from the outside, assembling their understanding from a website, a sales conversation, a presentation, or a handful of interactions. They’re trying to understand years of decisions without having lived through them.
We’ve found that organizations rarely become difficult to understand because of bad decisions. More often, they become difficult to understand because of years of good ones. Every new product, service, initiative, acquisition, or market adds another piece to the picture. The picture itself becomes richer, but the relationships between the pieces become harder to see.
Imagine unfolding a map that shows every destination but none of the roads connecting them. Nothing is missing, yet making sense of the whole suddenly becomes difficult. You don’t need more destinations. You need to understand how they relate to one another. Organizations experience something similar.
The challenge isn’t that people lack information. Most organizations have no shortage of information. The challenge is that information, by itself, rarely creates understanding. Understanding comes from seeing how the pieces fit together, why they exist, and how each one supports the others.
That’s why we’ve learned to look beyond communication itself. A new website may be needed. Clearer messaging may help. Better software, stronger presentations, and a more thoughtful brand can all make a meaningful difference. But those things are most effective when they’re expressing an understanding that already exists rather than trying to create one.
We’ve come to believe that growing organizations rarely lose their value. Over time, they lose a shared understanding of it. Helping people regain that understanding is where our work begins.
