The Scale-Speed Paradox: Why Growth Requires Better Systems, Not More Approvals

There is an uncomfortable truth about growth: a business can outgrow its decision-making model before it outgrows its product, market or ambition.

At the beginning, speed comes from proximity. The founder is close to the customer, work and decision. As people, money and stakeholders are added, leaders often respond with another approval, policy, reporting layer or control.

Tony Manganiello makes the useful point in his Inc. article on fast-growing companies that growth tests a company's decision-making model as well as its business model. Speed is not the absence of systems. It becomes possible when the system makes good decisions easier, ownership clearer and escalation proportionate.

Approval addiction

Approval addiction begins as protection. A leader wants to prevent a bad hire, an avoidable cost, an inconsistent promise or a regulatory mistake, so the leader keeps the final say. The team learns that progress requires permission.

This is visible in owner-led SMEs. A founder in Pretoria may still approve supplier changes that an operations manager could handle. In Sandton, a commercial executive may lack the discretion to protect a customer relationship. In Cape Town, a hybrid team may wait half a day for a decision. In Durban, a branch manager may understand the local customer but lack the authority to act.

The cost is more than delay. People optimise for being safe in front of the hierarchy rather than useful to the customer. The founder sees reduced initiative and concludes that the team is not ready. The team concludes that the founder does not trust them.

The control reflex

When something goes wrong, leaders reach for control. A missed deadline produces a reporting template, a compliance concern another sign-off, and a quality issue a committee. The new process is usually designed around the last failure.

Some controls are essential. South African companies may be navigating load shedding, procurement constraints, industry regulation and tax or labour requirements at the same time. But a control is not useful merely because it is formal or approved by the top team. I ask: what risk is it managing, and is it managing that risk at the right point in the work?

A control that catches material risk early can enable speed. A control that asks five people to review a low-risk decision creates an obstacle. Emotional intelligence helps leaders distinguish real risk from the anxiety of giving someone else authority. That is part of emotional intelligence as a leadership discipline.

Enabling constraints

The alternative to centralised approval is not anarchy. It is enabling constraint: a small number of clear boundaries that allow people to act with confidence.

In an open access study of Spotify at scale, Smite and colleagues describe autonomy as coordinated rather than permissive. Teams communicate, align and comply with a few enabling constraints. Authority is decentralised through workgroups, and teams make many decisions independently.

The lesson applies beyond technology. Autonomy does not mean that teams invent their own quality standards or ignore dependencies. It means the organisation is clear about what must be consistent and where local judgement is valuable. A useful system answers three questions: what does winning look like, what authority does this role have, and when is escalation needed?

Daemen, Tsilionis and Turetken reach a related conclusion. Formal controls such as standards and metrics can work alongside trust, peer coaching and mutual adjustment. Rigidly separating the two is restrictive. Hybrid, adaptive governance is better suited to preserving autonomy while maintaining coherence.

Why the standard solution falls short

The standard solution is to add structure without improving clarity. Leaders publish an approval matrix, redesign the org chart or introduce another dashboard. The machinery becomes more sophisticated, but the decision remains ambiguous.

A RACI chart cannot resolve a conflict between two executives who both believe they own the call. More process also accumulates around exceptional cases, until capable people become administrators rather than owners. The hidden traps that turn diverse teams into liabilities often begin with assumptions that were never made explicit.

Six steps leaders can take today

1. Define winning in observable terms. For each major team, state the outcomes that matter, the trade-offs that are acceptable and the measures that indicate progress. A slogan is not a decision system.

2. Map decisions, not just responsibilities. List the recurring decisions that create delay. Name who recommends, who decides, who must be consulted and who is informed. Keep the final decision owner singular where accountability matters.

3. Set authority thresholds. Give people clear room to act around cost, customer commitments, hiring, service recovery or operational changes. The threshold should reflect risk, not the seniority of the person asking.

4. Write escalation triggers. Escalation should be required when a defined boundary is crossed, not whenever someone feels nervous. Specify the conditions that call for senior intervention, and make everything else a decision at the appropriate level.

5. Use a small control set. Keep the standards, metrics and checks that protect quality, compliance and strategic alignment. Remove controls that merely reproduce information or delay a decision without changing its risk.

6. Review decisions after the fact. Give teams a regular forum to examine what was decided, what was learned and whether the boundary was set correctly. If every mistake leads to another approval, the system will become unworkable. Sometimes the better response is a clearer constraint, better coaching or a changed threshold.

The scale-speed paradox is resolved when leaders stop treating autonomy and control as opposites. The goal is not to eliminate authority. It is to place authority close enough to the work for judgement to be useful, while keeping the constraints that protect the enterprise.

Growth should increase an organisation's capacity to decide, not its dependence on the founder's inbox. That requires leaders to replace approval habits with decision clarity, replace fear-driven controls with enabling constraints and build enough trust for people to use their authority responsibly.

That work is rarely solved by a template. It is tested with people who understand growth and will challenge the assumptions beneath the system. At The Leadership Boardroom, CEOs and founders across Pretoria, Sandton, Cape Town, Durban and the wider TLB network work through these questions with peers who understand the stakes and question the comfortable answer.

If growth has made every decision feel more important and every decision slower, a confidential peer advisory conversation may be the right place to start. Explore The Leadership Boardroom and consider whether your company needs another approval, or a better system for deciding.

Dennis Kriel is the founder of The Leadership Boardroom, a peer advisory community for CEOs and founders meeting in Pretoria, Sandton, Cape Town, Durban and Windhoek. A serial entrepreneur, educator and international keynote speaker, he writes on leadership, decision-making and building businesses that outlast their founders. Connect at denniskriel.com.

Sources

• Tony Manganiello, Inc., "How Fast-Growing Companies Keep Their Speed as They Scale", 16 August 2026: https://www.inc.com/tony-manganiello/how-fast-growing-companies-keep-their-speed-as-they-scale/91390310
• Smite et al., Journal of Systems and Software, Volume 200, June 2023, DOI 10.1016/j.jss.2023.111649: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2023.111649
• Daemen, Tsilionis and Turetken, Information and Software Technology, Volume 191, March 2026, DOI 10.1016/j.infsof.2025.107998: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2025.107998