Crossing the scale-up chasm: How you can leverage Rework for sustainable growth

You are facing a huge opportunity to grow your business and earn big profits. But are you really prepared to take on the new challenges that come with it?

If you think it can be easier as you have more resources in hand, you may be encountering an illusion.

There are some key challenges you should be aware of before scaling, and we will see how our Rework product can help you navigate through these hurdles and thrive.

Introducing the Scale-up Chasm

Every business goes through two main phases. In the beginning, there's the exploration phase when you discover the product-market fit. Once you’ve figured that out, you can now start capitalizing on your product or service and grow your profits rapidly, which is called the exploitation phase.

Between the two phases, there’s this decision you need to make: whether to keep your company stable the way it is, or to head for growth.

Staying still is no less risky - the market is constantly evolving and your competitive advantage today can be easily gone tomorrow.

On the other hand, if you choose to expand the business, get ready to encounter what we call the “scale-up chasm”.

The Paradox of Growth

When you first start scaling, it seems like everything should get easier.  After all, more resources should mean more opportunities; and with more hands on deck, tasks should get done faster.

But in reality, growth brings its own set of challenges. It’s because more resources equal more complexity.

Dr. Verne C. Harnish, author of the book “Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't”, explained the situation perfectly within one illustration: 



“When there’s just the founder and an assistant, there are only two channels of communication. Add a person and the degree of complexity triples from two to six. [...] Expanding the team from three to four people grows the team only 33%, yet complexity may increase 400%”, Verne wrote in his book.  

Decisions that used to be straightforward now involve multiple layers, and processes that used to work well for a small team become stagnant among a large group. Departments become more separated and get overlapped easily.

Meanwhile, the greater demands from new customers put pressure on the already-strained operation. Waves of newcomers can get out of hand and require enormous training efforts.

Uncontrolled scaling can turn your business into a mess of bureaucracies.

In the end, the overwhelming complexity can only lead to increasing costs and declining customer satisfaction. If you fail to address these challenges, your company may need to switch to survival mode, cutting costs and refocusing efforts just to stay afloat. In the worst cases, businesses can face bankruptcy or be forced into distress sales. That’s where the scale-up chasm gets you.

Overcoming the Scale-up Chasm: Key obstacles and Rework solutions

Now that you have been aware of the scale-up chasm, identifying and preparing for the upcoming challenges can be the difference between thriving and merely surviving. 

2.1. Management Bottlenecks

One blocker that challenges every CEO when crossing the scale-up chasm is the decision-making process.

Bottlenecks in the approval process cause frustration for both employees and the top management. Any hours passing by without any decisions being made can cost your business big opportunities and slow down the operation wheel.

The challenge comes not only from the complexity of hierarchical layers but also from the leaders themselves. It is hard to give up on the omnipotence that one CEO used to have when he only had himself to oversee everything. As the company scales up, the leader needs to give up on his power and learn delegation.

This is where Rework.com steps in. With our Request feature, we want to simplify the decision-making and delegating process.

First, it standardizes the format of requests. Everyone knows exactly in advance what information needs to be included for approval and who will review their request. Thanks to this clarified process, one of our customer companies recorded a shooting number of requests in a month, showing that the employees were taking their initiative.

Next, Rework.com encourages delegating decision-making authority. We make it easy for you to define which decisions require whose input. You can also forward the request to anyone you think is capable of making the decision.

On top of everything, Rework.com centralizes all critical data to help you make informed decisions quickly. Instead of hunting down information from different sources, you and your team can access everything you need in one place.

All these decision-making processes can now happen within a click away, and you can do it anywhere only with a smartphone in your hand. In a fast-growing company, speed is everything.  

2.2 Compliance Risks

When you were a small business, keeping up with regulations and standards was pretty straightforward. But the more your company grows, the more laws and standards you have to follow, as you are put under closer scrutiny. Failing to comply with these regulations can cost you big time, including hefty fines, legal troubles, and damage to your company’s reputation.

The hardest thing lies in maintaining consistent policies and standards across a larger organization. With the growing number of people, it’s difficult to ensure that everyone is following the same rules and procedures.

Now it is no longer a worry with the help of Rework.

The first thing needed to guarantee compliance is to clarify the rules. By spelling out uniform guidelines, you require your employees to be on the same page and follow the same procedures. Meanwhile, those rules must be widely accessible to whoever is involved.  

In Rework, we design the Work Rules feature to be highly organized. We keep track of different versions of a rule and an employee can always refer to the latest one. A small worthy feature is listing people who have viewed the published rule so that leaders can follow how the information is being delivered.

Those rules must also be accompanied by a violation handling process. You can design those processes and keep a record of violation cases right within the Work Rules features.

What’s most important is to integrate those rules into everyday working practices. In Rework Flows - the process management feature where most of the operations take place - you can define your procedure including all the rules (like who does what within how much time) and your employees will be given the automatic guide to carry out the process.

It takes no time to train new employees on the existing processes yet still prevents human compliance errors.

2.3. Operation Inefficiencies

Due to the complexity, an expanding business can face a drop in productivity. The links between teams get broken, collaboration becomes cumbersome, and information and data seem to scatter all over the place.

As an operation management platform, Rework aims to centralize all internal activities. The goal is to create a scalable infrastructure that supports business growth.

Think of it like the transportation infrastructure. Similar to how traffic is regulated and connected, Rework keeps the business running with minimal downtime by structuring the different operational components - process jobs, requests, tasks, expenses, etc. - but still keeping them closely integrated.

If you are familiar with workflow automation software like Zapier or Make.com, you have a lot of possibilities in hand to try with Rework. Not only can you set up workflow rules within one feature, but you can also do it across different features, and even with external systems using API. We help you automate repetitive tasks to speed up the system and ensure more consistent outcomes.

We also offer seamless team collaboration with Rework Projects, helping team members share information and work together efficiently.

Most importantly, Rework centralizes all operational data. One critical problem when a company expands is that leaders often get isolated from daily operations, which prevents them from making informed decisions. With real-time, built-in reports and customizable dashboards, leaders can now track progress, identify issues, and give timely instructions.  

Managing a larger team is not only about “doing more” - the complexity it brings requires a whole paradigm shift, which some companies fail to equip themselves with. A new technology like Rework can be the game-changer you need to cross the chasm and get ready for take-off.