As businesses grow, the pressure points often shift from demand to execution. What worked at the early stage begins to break and without the right structure, growth can quickly become difficult to manage. In this interview, Nsikan Utuk Ubi, Founder & CEO, Nubi Consulting, shares practical insights on where businesses go wrong and how to scale with clarity and control.
When you look at businesses that struggle as they grow, what is usually wrong and at what point do things typically start to become unclear or difficult to manage?
Businesses rarely struggle because of lack of ambition; in most cases, they struggle because growth outpaces structure. Things usually start to break at the point where the business is no longer small enough for the founder to be involved in everything, but not yet structured enough to operate without them. That “in-between” stage is where the strain begins.
Growing without structure looks like constant firefighting instead of planned execution and reactive rather than proactive. Ownership of outcomes is unclear, teams are working hard but not moving in the same direction, and strategy sits with the founder instead of being translated into action.
You work with a range of clients from founders to more established businesses. What common challenges do you see across early-stage businesses, SMEs, and more established organisations? Where do these challenges overlap?
Across stages, the challenges evolve but they are deeply connected.
In early-stage businesses, there is often a lack of focus where businesses are trying to do too many things at once along with no clearly defined value proposition or target customer. Decisions tend to be driven by urgency rather than direction, and there is often premature scaling, where businesses attempt to operate like fully built organisations instead of growing in deliberate phases. That usually leads to unnecessary cost, complexity, and early redundancy.
For SMEs, the pattern shifts to growth without systems, and founder dependency starts to become a bottleneck.
In more established organisations, you see organisational inertia. Even when there is awareness that change is needed, legacy ways of working persist, slowing execution and limiting adaptability. There is often misalignment across business units, strategy exists but is not effectively executed, and decision-making becomes slow due to complexity and silos.
Across all stages, the core issue is the same: direction, alignment, and accountability.
What do founders or business leaders consistently get wrong when trying to scale?
A common mistake is assuming that growth will fix internal issues. In reality, growth amplifies whatever already exists. There is also a tendency to delay putting structure in place because leaders don’t want to “slow things down,” without realising that the lack of structure is what eventually slows them down.
Early signs of misalignment include conflicting priorities across departments, increased effort with diminishing results, and leadership spending more time resolving internal issues than driving growth. In some cases, you also begin to see a decline in customers or clients.
What is one widely accepted belief about business growth or strategy that you strongly disagree with?
One belief I strongly disagree with is that businesses struggle because they lack strategy. Most businesses don’t struggle because they lack strategy; they struggle because their strategy is not translated into execution.
The real gap is turning a well-articulated strategy into clear objectives and priorities, aligned teams, and consistent delivery.
Please share a brief example of a business that struggled due to lack of structure or alignment, or one that improved significantly once there was clearer direction. What changed in that situation?
I worked with a business that was receiving strong demand and increasing requests from clients, but internally they were struggling to keep up in a consistent and structured way. On the surface, it looked like a capacity issue, but the real challenge was structural. The business had not evolved its operating model to match the pace of demand and was still relying on systems from its early days that could no longer support its current capacity.
Requests were coming in through multiple informal channels with no structured intake process. Teams were duplicating effort or working in silos because ownership was unclear. Prioritisation was reactive, with urgent requests constantly overriding strategic work, and there was limited visibility into workload and delivery timelines. As a result, despite strong demand, the business struggled to scale efficiently and deliver consistently.
What changed was a shift towards structure and operating discipline. We introduced a structured request and prioritisation process, clearly defined ownership across teams, and established simple workflows for intake, tracking, and delivery. We also set up standard operating procedures for key activities and created visibility around capacity and timelines.
Once this was in place, the business was able to manage demand more effectively, reduce internal friction, and scale delivery in a more predictable way. The key shift was moving from an informal, reactive way of working to a structured operating model that could support growth.
After working with Nubi Consulting, what typically changes for a business?
What typically changes is the structure of the business and the approach to scaling.
Businesses leave with clearer, well-defined strategic direction and priorities. There is stronger alignment across leadership and teams, improved execution efficiency, and faster, more focused delivery. Ownership and accountability become clear, and there is better visibility into what is working and what is not.
You also see more disciplined use of resources, reduced internal friction, and fewer bottlenecks overall.
When businesses are preparing for growth or funding, what are they often missing?
Many businesses focus on the pitch but neglect the fundamentals.
What is often missing is a well-defined and credible growth strategy, a clearly articulated unique selling proposition, and a structured operating model that can support scale. There is also often limited visibility into unit economics and performance drivers, as well as misalignment within the leadership team.
Investors are not just funding an idea, they are backing a business that can execute, scale, and deliver returns. Many businesses are simply not yet structured to do that.
If a business wants to grow in a more structured and sustainable way, what should they focus on first?
The first focus should be direction.
Before scaling, a business needs to define where it is going, its strategy, how it will get there through a clear execution plan, and who is responsible for what in terms of structure and accountability.
Growth becomes more sustainable when it is intentional, not reactive.
