Why Fast Growth Quietly Kills What Made Your Company Great

Jan de Vries · 2026-09-23

### The Hidden Cost of Scaling You know that feeling when something that used to work just... stops working? Maybe your team used to be tight-knit, decisions were fast, and everyone knew exactly what mattered. Then you hired more people, opened new markets, and suddenly the magic feels diluted. Erik Vermeulen has spent over 20 years studying this exact problem. As a behavioural strategist and Managing Director of Ridgeline Consulting, he's advised organisations on culture, leadership, and performance. But what makes his perspective unique? He's also led expeditions through some of the most unforgiving environments on the planet. That combination — boardroom strategy and desert crossings — gives him a rare lens on why growth so often undermines the very culture that sparked success in the first place. ### Adventure Is Anywhere the Outcome Is Uncertain "One of the big challenges in business today is how we deal with uncertainty," Erik explains. He co-authored a book on using adventure experiences to build teams, and during that research, he had a realisation. "For a long time, we thought adventure was defined by a set of activities — climbing a high mountain, crossing a desert. But we found that adventure actually refers to any undertaking where the outcome is uncertain." That's life. That's business. We tend to mask that uncertainty through rituals, routines, and structures. But here's the uncomfortable truth: we have no certainty about whether we'll be around tomorrow to meet our sales targets or lead our teams. > "Adventure is such a powerful lens through which to look at leadership, teams and behaviour." When Erik leads expeditions, people are walking across deserts or climbing mountains. The uncertainty isn't theoretical — it's right there, demanding a response. And that's exactly the condition most business leaders are navigating, whether they admit it or not. ### What Separates Great Teams from Groups of Talented Individuals Erik identifies two things that distinguish genuinely high-performing teams. - **Culture — the unwritten rules.** What's accepted? What isn't? What behaviours move us toward our goals, and what pulls us away? Great teams are crystal clear about what's tolerated and what's not. - **A definite beginning and end.** This one's more controversial. Great teams know where they start and where they end. They set a goal, follow the process, achieve it, then reset before tackling the next challenge. "Often in corporate teams, we're just a group of people who work together year in and year out, chasing the next target," Erik says. "Really great teams have the ability to set a particular goal, follow the process, and then reset." ### Why Growth Dilutes Culture — The Cordial Metaphor Every organisation has a growth metric. Bigger than last year. More sales. More of whatever they build. "Growth is where your problem starts in terms of culture," Erik warns. He uses a simple metaphor: cordial. The glass is the structure that allows you to do business. You add the cordial — the culture, the people, the way things get done. But when you keep pouring in more water to fill more glasses, the taste gets weaker. The original flavour fades. That's what happens when you scale without intentional culture stewardship. The rituals that once bonded a team become diluted. The unwritten rules get fuzzy. New hires don't absorb what took years to build. So what should leaders watch for? - **Decision-making slowing down.** What used to take minutes now takes meetings. - **Values becoming posters instead of practices.** If nobody can name the unwritten rules, they've evaporated. - **Teams losing their reset rhythm.** When every project bleeds into the next, people burn out and culture erodes. The fix isn't to stop growing. It's to grow with intention — to keep the cordial concentrated even as you pour more glasses. Erik's expedition experience reinforces this. On a mountain, you can't afford ambiguity about who does what, what's acceptable, and when a phase ends. The same clarity that keeps a team alive at 18,000 feet can keep your company's culture alive through hypergrowth. The question isn't whether growth will challenge your culture. It's whether you'll notice before the taste is gone.