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Why do so many promising start-ups go off the rails? Often they have trouble scaling. Founders may resist imposing discipline for fear of losing agility and control--but the price may be chaotic operations and unpredictable performance. Drawing on extensive case studies and 75 years of research, the authors outline four activities that can help companies handle greater complexity as they seek new avenues for growth. Firms should: (1) Hire specialists in functions such as sales, HR, marketing, R&D, and manufacturing. This lets them tackle work more efficiently and catalyzes future growth by creating slack in the rest of the organization. (2) Add management structure. A few people at the top can't effectively supervise everyone's increasingly specialized daily work--and it's hard for employees to stay focused and engaged without guidance and processes. (3) Establish a framework of plans and goals. Otherwise, improvisation may amount to aimless riffing. (4) Sustain the culture. Articulate the founding values in mission statements and job descriptions, and hire and reward for cultural fit. Between the extremes of ad hoc and prescriptive organizing lies a useful middle ground--and leaders who can find it gain an important edge on their rivals.

It is January 2014 and Rahul Sharma, cofounder of Micromax Informatics (Micromax), the largest Indian mobile handset company, is preparing for an emergency conference call with his private equity investors. In the last six years, Micromax had grown its annual product revenues from $54M to over $1B. Unfortunately, it was difficult for the founding team to keep up with Micromax's rapid growth, triggering a series of missteps in 2010 that brought the company close to catastrophe. In response, investors had convinced Sharma and his cofounders to hire their first outside CEO, Deepak Mehrotra, and several senior professionals. With the founders working alongside the new "professionals," frequent overlaps and sometimes run-ins occurred. Now, both Mehrotra and the head of their smartphone division had resigned. Sharma evaluates their options: Would the founders need to reconsider their involvement in the company they created? Or was there still a middle ground where both founders and professionals could coexist in the business?