When you’re growing rapidly, it can look great on paper, but it can come at the cost of your people becoming burnt out. Knowing when you need to slow down requires you and your leadership team to take the time to check in with your employees regularly.
Rick Sartori, vice president of East Coast and arbor for Monarch Landscape Companies, based in Los Angeles, California, says he has weekly and even daily meetings with team members he manages across the country to monitor for signs of burnout.
“Within those check ins, it allows me to be able to gage just the tone of their voice, how they’re thinking through their day,” Sartori says. “Are they being as productive as they can be or do they need support? It gives them a conduit to be able to speak up for a small problem or something’s bothering them. A small issue becomes a bigger issue. I’m looking at increased errors in their work. Maybe their communication or responsiveness has declined with customers or other members of the team, or they have emotional fatigue, frustration, or short patience.”
Slowing Down Without Losing Momentum
If you’re noticing signs that your team members may be close to their breaking point, it may be necessary to slow your growth.
Slowing down doesn’t necessarily mean you need to turn away work. In some cases, it can look like focusing on fewer initiatives or being more intentional about how your team executes certain projects.
Sartori says they’ve purposefully slowed the rollout of certain initiatives when they realize they’ve bitten off more than they can chew.
“When you build a culture with people, where everybody has a voice and what the direction of the business is, you may get a lot of great opinions, and you may get a lot of great initiatives out of those opinions, but we really have to identify the top three big initiatives that can really move the ball down the field and help the business grow,” Sartori says.
Allen Sweeney, CEO of Aphix, LLC, based in Frankfort, Kentucky, says they grow at a sustainable rate by thinking ahead about the hires and processes they’ll need in the future so they can stay ahead of the burnout curve.
Sartori notes that while growth is important, sustainable growth is the kind that lasts in the long term.
“We’ve never had to stop growth altogether, but we work hard to ensure we’re growing at a healthy rate that protects our people and the culture,” says Amy Snyder, director of public relations for Ruppert Landscape, based in Laytonsville, Maryland. “We’d rather grow well than grow too fast.”
Austin Salsbery, branch manager for Milosi, based in Hendersonville, Tennessee, says they have had to pause in the past to help their team recover from a rapid growth period.
“We are learning what real growth is and the pattern of growth in our market,” Salsbery says. “It is important for us to continue building momentum, but also allowing the company to grow naturally at times as we prepare for the next boost of growth.”
Prioritizing People for Sustainable Growth
If you don’t want to put your team back at risk of burnout when things ramp back up, you need a people-first mindset guiding your growth decisions.
Snyder says when you put your people first, sustainable growth follows naturally.
“Build a deep bench of leaders, invest in training, and communicate constantly with your teams,” Snyder says. “Be tuned into the early signals — fatigue, rising overtime, dips in quality — and respond before burnout sets in. Growth should create opportunity, not exhaustion.”
Salsbery recommends leaning on your systems as much as possible and looking for ways to update processes as needed by adding automation or AI.
Sartori notes that your frontline teams will be the first to feel the pressure from rapid growth so you have to be present and intentional. Make sure your team feels comfortable speaking up when they are reaching their capacity.
“Build a good culture underneath your business, so that you’ve got people who feel like they can speak up and be a part of the solution,” Sartori says.
Sweeney adds that if your current business isn’t running smoothly, don’t scale up as this only creates a bigger fire.
“Once the current business is in order, stress test your processes and team to find the holes and see what is going to break during scale,” Sweeney says. “If you can address those before game day, it will make a much smoother scaling process.”
