Growth is exciting when you talk about it in a boardroom, but it can feel very different to the people responsible for making it happen. New markets. New products. Acquisitions. New leadership structures. New expectations. Every growth initiative creates change somewhere in an organization and eventually, an organization’s ability to absorb that change can become as important to growth as the strategy itself.
I’ve seen this firsthand. Over the past several years, our business has grown more than 2.5 times, transitioned from employee ownership through an acquisition, and evolved from a 75-year-old tool manufacturer into The Malco Group, the Americas platform for Aspen Pumps Group, a global manufacturer of HVAC/R and building services solutions, and home to a growing portfolio of brands serving the skilled trades.
Through that experience, I’ve become convinced of something: Sustainable growth isn’t only a business strategy, it’s a change-management competency. The companies that build that competency don’t necessarily experience less change, they just become better at moving through it.
Give people a destination, not just an announcement
One of the biggest mistakes leaders can make during a transformation is communicating the change without spending enough time communicating the destination. Executives typically have a significant head start—we’ve spent months discussing a new strategy or an organizational change. We’ve debated it, pressure-tested it and imagined what it could make possible for our business. Then we announce it to employees and expect them to see what we see. They won’t—at least not immediately.
To successfully navigate any change, employees need to understand not only what’s changing, but where the organization is going, why the change is necessary to get there and how they fit into that future.
When Malco Tools was acquired by Aspen Pumps Group in 2024, we didn’t view the acquisition simply as the end of one chapter. It gave us the opportunity to define a much bigger future—building Malco into the headquarters for Aspen’s Americas operation and bringing together a broader portfolio of businesses and solutions as The Malco Group.
The acquisition may have been the catalyst for change, but The Malco Group—and the bigger future we were building—was the destination. Our job as leaders was to make that future as clear to our employees as it had already become to us.
Translate vision into action
Growth creates complexity faster than most organizations create clarity. As companies add products, markets and businesses, it becomes increasingly difficult for employees to understand what’s most important. That’s when strategy risks becoming something discussed in leadership meetings rather than something that drives decisions throughout the organization.
In my experience, I’ve found that people can handle more change than leaders sometimes think. What they struggle with is change they don’t understand. It is important to remember that the job of the CEO isn’t to eliminate uncertainty—it’s to create enough clarity that people can keep moving despite it.
That means continually connecting the long-term vision to what people are doing today. We’ve used the EOS Traction framework to create greater transparency and accountability around our goals, priorities and performance. We reinforce those priorities through regular company-wide conversations about where we’re going, what we’re working on and how those pieces connect.
The specific system matters less than the discipline behind it. If employees can’t connect today’s priorities to tomorrow’s destination, the strategy isn’t clear enough yet.
Hire great people and give them room to lead
As organizations grow, another temptation is to add control along with complexity. Some structure is necessary as people need clarity around priorities, accountability and decision-making, but structure shouldn’t become bureaucracy.
My leadership philosophy is simple: Hire great people, invest in them and then get out of their way.
The CEO’s job isn’t to personally manage every piece of a transformation. It’s to make the destination clear, put strong leaders in the right seats and create an environment where they can make decisions and move. That’s particularly important during rapid growth, because no CEO can scale an organization if every decision still has to travel through them.
Build the capacity to keep moving
When it comes to change in business, the reality is that it’s never finished. Markets change. Customers change. Technology changes. Companies acquire businesses, launch products and continuously rethink how they operate. That is how good businesses become great businesses.
The goal shouldn’t be to build an organization that never gets tired of change. It should be to build one that understands where it’s going, trusts the people leading it there and has the confidence to keep moving even when every answer isn’t yet known.
For CEOs pursuing ambitious growth, that may be one of the most important capabilities we can build. Because ultimately, your growth strategy can only move as fast as your organization can move with it.
