What do you do when the marketing works—and the company isn’t ready for the demand?

Recently, I watched a mid-market company generate more than 100 inbound opportunities as a new growth initiative gained traction.

That’s the part everyone wants to put in the PowerPoint.

The part that doesn’t make the slide?

The company looked at the new demand and said, in effect: We can’t responsibly take all of this on yet.

They were already working through a core systems rollout. A CRM decision was waiting behind it. Operations needed the next three to six months to improve capacity and process.

The less glamorous questions

My first reaction was excitement. More leads. More momentum. Proof that the strategy was working.

Then came the less glamorous questions.

Pausing may be the mature decision

I’ll be honest: earlier in my career, I probably would have kept pushing the accelerator. More leads rarely gets you booed out of a meeting.

Now, I think pausing may have been the more mature decision.

In his Harvard Business Review article, “How Fast Should Your Company Really Grow?,”¹ Gary Pisano argues that demand is only half of a growth strategy. The other half is building the capacity and capabilities to serve it.

This is a big part of how we think at MPS: clarity first, then the operating model, revenue architecture and execution.

Not because growth should be slow.

Because it should stick.

If you’ve had to make this call, tell us where the strain showed up.