Mind the Gap | Boarding at Paddington Station

Although brought up in a British colony where we drank more tea than the Queen, I was already ten years old when my older sister returned home from her travels to London with a “Mind the Gap” hoodie for me. On any given Tuesday in the summer, my hands and feet were like ice blocks and, showing that she well knew the condition of my suboptimal thermostat, it was the perfect present – I wore it for years while it became soft and loved and strangely philosophical in my thought processes, now when I look back.

I was very similar to most children, the natural fear of falling, the vertigo on a high balcony, the tummy flip in an elevator, when to step off the escalator… When your eyes are 60cm away from the gap, it’s an abyss. But even as adults, that latent fear hidden deep within our beliefs and behaviours doesn’t go away… years later, when I stepped off my first underground at Paddington station, I felt it, that same split-second hesitation where you’re hoping your mind isn’t playing tricks on you with the illusion of the gap feeling bigger than it is.

The gap is tiny, yes, and easily overcome, once or twice. But imagine having to step off ten platforms every hour, what if you had to step off 300 platforms in a workday? That’s one gap to mind, every minute…

My speciality is this gap. One to seven members of your business is easy, it’s just 21 direct relationships. Our society prepared us for 100-people villages so we can handle 21 in our workplace dynamic easily. But we weren’t prepared for triple that amount in direct relationships which is where the founders’ growth chasm lies – the distance between 7 entrepreneurial types (=21 direct relationships) and where you cross the social line – 14 to 15 staff members (=91 – 105 direct relationships). So, here the math is mathing and we can see the compounding effects, but the issue is not the relationships now, it’s the structure, because at 7, we could have entrepreneurial types and the relationships were close enough to have someone step into another lane for a day or two or not have a backup plan and it wasn’t necessarily detrimental.

However, when you’re onboarding your fifteenth employee, you’ve now split your organisation into silos and with 100 or so direct relationships, lane-swapping is dangerous. An organisation needs SOPs, RACIs, accountability, flexibility and adaptability. Scale requires systems.

As if that wasn’t enough, an organisation cannot usually stop at 15 because in most models, the overheads for that structure, are more expensive than the income, so we need to increase the inputs of the value chain, adding more or less ten people to make the growth sustainable.

That’s where the compounding crashes into that chasm – I no longer use the word gap here – it’s a chasm at 300 direct relationships. It’s akin to stepping off a platform every minute.

One step, every minute, eight hours a day.

Which is exactly why most founders hit this stage and are firefighting constantly, or missing 200 calls on their switchboard or have 1,000 unanswered emails in their inbox.

This is not a performance issue. This is a structural gap. And my, do I love closing that gap. This does not have to end in the Valley of Death…

At the end of every growth spurt, our entrepreneurial spirit meets the infamous Valley of Death. Whereas in the first valley many startups perish due to a lack of investment or cash flow, in the subsequent Valleys of Death, growing complexity and associated pain points are particularly risky pitfalls for scaling.

The Valley of Death gets its name for a reason: only 4% of ALL companies survive the first valley. Only a tiny fraction survive, and even fewer reach USD 50+ million turnover. Knowing the terrain is critical.

This is where growth psychology meets business structure. Most founders add effort to the next hire, to extra hours, to anything that will fix it. But no amount of effort fixes structure. Systems, processes, leadership and organisational design must scale alongside ambition.

Greiner’s Growth Model

Every entrepreneur faces growth phases. Each phase has its own growing pains, and each crescendo ends in a crisis. Larry Greiner’s growth model maps this beautifully:

Phase 1 – Startup (<8 employees): Growth through creativity, ends with leadership crisis. You do it all. Energy and ideas are flying.

Phase 2 – Rollercoaster (8–25 employees): Growth through leadership, ends with autonomy crisis. Processes and systems become critical, your role starts shifting from visionary to manager.

Phase 3 – Adolescent (25–50 employees): Growth through delegation, ends with management crisis. Leadership team emerges. Focus shifts to people, processes, and profits.

Phase 4 – Scale Up (50–150 employees): Growth through coordination, ends with bureaucracy crisis. Operations and delegation are optimised. Talent wars are real. You must lead, not manage.

Phase 5 – Flow (>150 employees): Growth through collaboration, ends with consultation crisis. Standardisation and scalability are central. Innovation, culture, and people-process balance drive performance.

Your role as entrepreneur must evolve at every phase. What worked yesterday will not work at the next Valley of Death.

Anyone who knows me, knows I love a good story and as a human being, I believe it's what unites us. Think of yourself as the hero in your company’s story. The gaps or chasms, the Valleys of Death are your trials. The people, processes and systems are your allies. Each growth spurt, each crisis, is not a failure – it’s a dragon to slay, a gap to mind, a challenge to master.

With the right preparation, the chasms are conquerable. Your business can survive the Valleys of Death. Growth becomes predictable, manageable and may I say, perhaps even exhilarating.

So, why “Mind the Gap”?

Because that’s what it all comes down to. Every entrepreneur steps on and off the platform, every day. Some gaps are small, barely noticeable. Others are yawning chasms that test your systems, your patience and your every nerve! The challenge isn’t just surviving each step – it’s recognising the patterns of growth, the hidden pressures and the cracks before they widen.

Understanding where your gaps appear – in relationships, structure, leadership, or in processes – is the first step to navigating them. The rest comes from planning, reflection and knowing which growth phase you’re in so that you can anticipate the next trial, the next Valley of Death and the next leap forward.

The gap is there. It always has been. The difference is noticing it before you stumble. The difference if minding that gap.