When Growth Outpaces Leadership Capacity
For many companies in Vietnam’s growth phase, the most dangerous problems don’t appear when things are going badly — they emerge precisely when things are going well.
Revenue rises. Product-market fit stabilizes. Market demand increases. But under the surface, operational strain begins to show — because the people and systems that enabled early growth were never designed for scale. The result is a leadership paradox: the company is growing, but leadership capacity is shrinking.
Operational Friction Is Often a Symptom of Leadership Gaps
Most mid-sized Vietnamese companies are led by close-knit teams with high trust and long-standing loyalty. These relationships are a strength — but they also create blind spots. Roles remain vague. Accountability is informal. Decision-making relies heavily on a few individuals, often the founder.
When revenue doubles or triples, these informal systems begin to crack. Internal communication slows. Managers struggle to lead teams they were never trained to manage. Founders revert to firefighting because no one else can confidently make calls at the new level of complexity.
This dynamic is not about weak people — it’s about unscaled leadership structures.
Loyalty Is Not the Same as Capability
In many Vietnamese companies, long-tenured team members are rewarded with seniority. This approach works in stable environments. But in periods of rapid growth, seniority without capability creates risk.
The reality is that the next phase of business often demands a different caliber of decision-making, delegation, and execution. Companies must develop or replace leadership layers that can no longer support the scale required.
This is one of the most difficult transitions for founders — not because they lack strategic awareness, but because it often involves redefining relationships with loyal employees who have been present since the beginning.
Growth Outpaces Culture Unless It’s Managed
Scaling revenue is easy compared to scaling organizational behavior. As teams grow, alignment weakens. Culture dilutes. Expectations vary across departments. The speed of execution slows — not because people aren’t working hard, but because no one is leading systemically.
Many companies continue operating like a startup when they should be transitioning into structured leadership environments. Without that shift, growth magnifies dysfunction.
The companies that scale successfully are those that invest deliberately in people development before it's comfortable — and before it's obvious.
What Needs to Change
To close the gap between revenue growth and team capability, companies must focus on a few key interventions:
Redefine roles and decision rights. Avoid informal authority systems; clarify who owns what decisions and why.
Invest in management development. First-time managers need frameworks, not intuition.
Introduce leadership accountability early. Define what good leadership looks like at each level — and build it into performance expectations.
Separate performance from proximity. Just because someone has been around doesn’t mean they are fit for future roles.
These are not cosmetic changes. They are structural upgrades that define whether a company can sustain growth — or revert to internal chaos.
The Founder Bottleneck Returns If the Team Doesn’t Scale
When the team fails to scale with the business, everything flows back to the founder. Strategic time disappears. Delegation fails. Trust erodes. Founders become reactive and frustrated — not because the business isn’t growing, but because no one else is growing with it. The founder then becomes both the engine and the bottleneck — and that is not a sustainable system.
Conclusion: Growth Without Structure Is Fragile
Vietnam’s mid-market companies are in a defining era. Those that master leadership development alongside business expansion will outlast their competitors — not just in revenue, but in resilience. Scaling the business is only half the challenge. The other half is scaling the people who make that growth possible.
