How fast-growth companies are most likely to fall Part 3

We previously talked about the IT and sourcing teams’ reluctance to admit problems or fix them when they know there is an issue – whether cost, risk, or performance. Now we want to talk about the situations that are most likely to cause this issue.

It’s ironic that the biggest problems are caused by success. As growth explodes it’s easier to let things slide, apply tactical fixes, and to not admit to real problems, or a need to improve processes, save money or both. Why stir up new issues by turning over that rock when you can barely keep up as it is? Why do better when you’re already a rock star? But there’s a difference between a rock star and a one-hit wonder – and that difference is continuous improvement.

· · ·So many of my current and former clients and are busy scaling.· · ·

They include not just startups but the most powerful firms in the world: Microsoft, Hearst, Sony, Blizzard, Riot, eBay, Intel, Verizon, and many others. Growth is great. But it also makes it harder to allocate IT resources among many moving and uncertain targets. When you grow, sometimes a key project gets zapped for headcount because the budget is needed for other pressing priorities. And as often as not, the first thing to get sacrificed are the projects with the best long-term returns but no short-term or visible results. Because hey, in the long run, we’ll all be dead (or at least at another job) and in the meantime, there’s a fire to put out today.

But why do these fires happen in the first place? Why do the biggest and best have outages, failure to scale, deployment delays, cost overruns, miserable users and dozens of other problems? Unfortunately there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Sometimes it’s about failing to get the right amount or type of IT capacity in place. Sometimes it’s about not paying enough attention to fixes for small problems and bottlenecks. Sometimes, the problem is just the opposite, spending willy-nilly on tactical projects for everyone who asks without evaluating strategic needs and finding common platforms. And as IT plays whack-a-mole with daily crises, long-term issues grow in the background, creating problems that the enterprise can’t even get its arms around, much less fix.

Consider the explosive debut of Pokemon Go, already the most successful mobile game in history a few short weeks after its launch. But that growth clearly outstripped the preparations by creators Niantic (a spinoff of Google, which remains an investor and provider of backbone services), the Pokemon Company and Nintendo. Repeatedly, ardent fans ran into screens that read “Our servers are experiencing issues. Please come back later.” As Wired pointed out in a recent story, users aren’t the only losers in this scenario. Every time the game’s servers choke; Nintendo and Niantic lose a chance to sell more in-app goodies to eager players. One problem may have been what was reportedly a too-small beta, which didn’t stress-test the system for anything like its actual outlandish success.

It’s a testament to the game’s insanely compelling nature that it still became such a hit. It’s a little like what happened the first time the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was streamed online years ago. People joked that it nearly broke the Internet, as hundreds of thousands of would-be viewers overwhelmed the site. The result created a media sensation but also a lot of unsatisfied would-be viewers. Victoria’s Secret’s tech leadership had simply failed to put in place enough resources to manage success.

When you’re Pokemon or Victoria’s Secret, you can still be a rockstar even in the face of failure. But what if it happens for a second-tier game that suddenly loses half of its audience due to glitches? What if there’s only one shot at glory and you flop?

IT Resources Whether you’re catapulted into success or still trying to get your big break.

It’s important to get advice from someone who’s been there for both the explosive growth and the stabilization that followed. We’ve worked with some of the biggest and most successful companies in tech, media, finance and beyond. We’ve worked with them to get new servers and bandwidth online in weeks. We’ve worked with them to cut surplus capacity and fix underperforming supplier relationships when they plateaued. And this helped them get the second wind and find new successes down the road.

The reason someone is successful – not just lucky with a one hit wonder – is understanding the value of targeted outside assistance. The companies and leaders that reinvent their success are not too proud, or scared, to get the support they need, even in areas where they may not fully realize they need it. In fact, they realize it makes them better and more effective.

The Fragility of Momentum

We are living in an age of manufactured miracles, a time between worlds where the digital and the physical blur into a single, shimmering mirage of perpetual growth. The mandate from the market, from the culture, from the very code that underpins our economy, is to scale—infinitely, relentlessly, and immediately. This obsession with explosive growth is more than a business strategy; it is a spiritual hunger, a desperate attempt to outrun a civilizational anxiety about our own relevance. We build our towers of code and capital not just for profit, but to prove we are still here, that we still matter. But in this frantic ascent, we often mistake speed for strength, and momentum for stability.

The first sign of the fracture is often a subtle sensory dissonance. I remember standing in a server room in the early days of a now-household-name company, the air thick with the metallic tang of ozone and the relentless, high-pitched whine of overworked fans. The lead engineer, his face illuminated by the pale blue light of a terminal screen, was typing with a frantic, percussive rhythm, his knuckles white. The screen was a cascade of error messages, a digital waterfall of failure. Outside that chilled room, the world was celebrating our success, but inside, we could feel the heat of an impending collapse. It’s the same feeling as when the servers for Pokémon Go buckled under the weight of their own unprecedented success, the collective groan of millions of players staring at a frozen screen, the phantom vibration of a notification that would never arrive. It’s the memory of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show attempting its first live stream, the anticipation turning to frustration as the video stuttered and died, the low hum of the dial-up connection a sad counterpoint to the on-screen glamour. These are not just technical glitches; they are tremors in the foundation of our ambitions.

The system itself is designed for this kind of spectacular failure. The logic of venture capital and the relentless pressure of quarterly earnings reports create an incentive structure that is fundamentally extractive. It demands short-term gains, visible results, and a narrative of unstoppable growth. Long-term resilience, the slow and unglamorous work of building robust systems, is sacrificed at the altar of the immediate. We are playing a game of whack-a-mole with crises, throwing resources at whatever fire is burning brightest today, while the slow burn of systemic risk goes unnoticed in the background. This isn't just about IT capacity; it's about a form of capitalism that values the strip-mine over the garden, the one-hit wonder over the enduring classic. We are building an economy of fleeting moments, not lasting value.

I have been complicit in this. I have sat in boardrooms where we made the conscious decision to chase the hockey-stick growth curve, to prioritize the feature that would generate the most buzz over the one that would create the most stability. I have felt the intoxicating rush of being a “rock star,” of riding the wave of exponential growth, even as a quiet voice in the back of my mind whispered that the wave was about to break. There is a seductive power in that momentum, a feeling of invincibility that makes it easy to ignore the cracks in the facade. It is a hard thing to admit that the very thing that made you feel alive was also the thing that was setting you up for a fall.

Growth is a fire that either forges or consumes.