Four reasons to put structure off until later

I heard four reasons structure could wait. I’d used all four.

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Over the past few months, I've been interviewing founders. Not formal interviews, more like conversations that start with one question and end up somewhere completely different from where I expected. I'm trying to understand how they build businesses around the lives they want to live. Sometimes over messages, sometimes on calls. And every time, at some point, the conversation reaches a place where I fall silent - because I'm not hearing their story anymore. I'm hearing my own.

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Four things, said by different people in different words, but essentially the same.

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First: I need to sell. Everything comes down to sales. Without them, we won't grow, and I need to be involved.

Second: I'm happy where I am. I have enough. I don't want to grow. I know what I want, and I'm fine with it.

Third: This business is my life's work. I love being in the middle of things, working with the team, rolling up my sleeves, getting involved. Why would I want to step away from that?

Fourth: I have an amazing team. Top professionals. They decide which tools to use and how to work. I stay out of their way.

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It's not that everyone had all four. I simply noticed four patterns, each of which touched something very familiar. Because at different stages of running my agency, I'd been in every one of those situations. And each time, I genuinely believed I didn't need any special structure.

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Before 2012, I was happy with everything. A small team, interesting projects. I knew my enough, and it didn't bother me. Then our pipeline literally dried up overnight. Not gradually - just like that, empty. And suddenly I was facing the question of whether to lay people off or almost shut down the business. I thought "staying this size" meant I could stop thinking about growth. What I hadn't built was enough visibility and resilience to maintain the size I already liked. It turned out that a steady flow of new clients wasn't about ambition. It was about survival. "I have enough" sounded great right up until we had nothing to pay salaries with.

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My First Ever Process Document

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When I decided I never wanted to lay people off again just because we'd run out of projects, it became clear that we needed to grow. I desperately needed to focus on sales. Even though, deep down, I hated sales. But every time I sat down to work on sales, I got pulled back into delivery - checking work on current projects, answering clients, finishing something someone else hadn't finished. So I made what seemed like the obvious decision at the time - I hired my first project manager. Well, technically, a PM assistant. Except instead of taking work off my plate, she started asking even more questions than I'd have dealt with if I'd just done everything myself. Every hour it was "What about this?", "What should I do here?", "The client said this, what should I reply?" I hired someone to free up time for sales. Instead, I got another person who needed my attention.

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And that's when, for the first time in my life, I sat down and wrote something like a process document. A simple guide: what to do every day, answers to the main questions she kept asking over and over. I had to step away from the very sales work we desperately needed to create that document. Because without it, the help I'd hired wasn't really help - it was just another thing I had to manage. I was pretty naive back then. I thought someone would come in and immediately start doing everything the right way. My way. But how was she supposed to know my way? Everything I thought was obvious was a black box to her.

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Then came years when we seriously invested in our people. Company-paid courses, conferences, training programs. We developed people I was proud of - yesterday's interns became team leads, and clients knew them by name. I had a great team, and I was confident they could handle things. Then one of our key people left, and I was shocked to discover just how much of my business depended on one person. Decisions, client relationships, knowledge that existed only in his head. It turned out you can become a hostage to your own excellent team.

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And my favorite one - "This is my life's work. I love being involved." Because I said that myself, from the first day to the last. My agency was my baby. I'd never sell it, never walk away. And yes, I loved being involved in the work. But being involved doesn't mean you see every risk or issue. Once, we got so excited about a great project that we let scope creep turn into $30,000 in direct losses. I was involved in daily operations. The team was excellent. And we screwed up. And the most frustrating part wasn't that nobody cared. Exactly the opposite - everyone cared too much. And I was the one sitting on calls with the client, turning red and mumbling something, while they refused to pay.

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The Paradox I Only See Now

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The strangest thing I realized from these interviews is that each of these four choices seemed completely logical at the time. Even right. I couldn't step away from sales to build structure because without sales, we wouldn't survive. But without structure, delivery kept dragging me back. I loved being close to the work, but without boundaries, being close didn't mean seeing every risk. I trusted excellent people, but I never transferred what they knew into the business, and that trust made the company fragile.

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It becomes a vicious circle. I can't work on structure because I'm too busy. And I'm busy precisely because there's no structure. What I kept treating as an extra burden, overhead, something I "don't have time for right now," turned out to be exactly what could have protected the things I was doing all of this for.

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Something to try this weekend:

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Pick the statement that sounds most like you right now:

"I need to focus on sales."

"I'm happy with the size of my business."

"I love being involved in the work."

"My team can figure things out."

And ask yourself one question: does the way my business is structured right now protect that choice? Or is it quietly, almost invisibly, pulling me away from it?

Have you caught yourself saying at least one of these four things? I'm genuinely curious.

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P.S. I'm continuing these interviews. If one of those four statements hit a little closer to home than you'd like, and you're open to a short conversation, write to me. I'd love to hear how this shows up in your business.