What works at five people won’t work at fifteen.
The informal coordination that felt effortless starts creating confusion. The single Slack channel becomes chaos. The weekly all-hands becomes unwieldy.
This is normal. Systems need to evolve.
Watch for the signals: Information gets lost. Decisions take too long. People don’t know what others are doing. New hires struggle to ramp up.
When you see these, adapt.
Add structure.
Create team boundaries.
Formalize what was informal.
Don’t resist the evolution.
The practices that built your early success need to change to sustain your later success.