Speed is a superpower. Until it becomes drag.
Early stage speed is healthy. You ship. You learn. You adjust. That's not chaos. That's momentum.
But as the team grows, speed starts to do something sneaky. It creates brand debt.
Not the dramatic kind. The quiet kind:
Everyone explains the company a little differently
Messaging changes week to week
Decisions get revisited because nothing got named
New hires can't tell what "good" looks like
The solution isn't "slow down." It's "stabilize what you've already built."
Because speed is great. Rework is expensive.
Here's a quick checklist to see if you're carrying brand debt:
[ ] Can every team member explain what you do in one sentence?
[ ] Do you have a single source of truth for messaging?
[ ] Can a new hire find examples of "good" without asking around?
[ ] Are decisions documented somewhere people can reference them?
[ ] Does your brand feel consistent across touchpoints, or does it shift depending on who's talking?
If you checked fewer than three, you're not broken. You're just growing faster than your systems.
And that's fixable.