What I Learned About Growth by Watching Clients Ignore IT Until It Broke Them

Growth can blind you to risk. I’ve watched companies double in size while their IT stayed stuck in startup mode. No one notices—until something breaks. Then suddenly, everyone’s in a scramble. Systems are down, people can’t work, data’s lost, and leadership wants answers yesterday.

Over the last few years at Notics, I’ve seen this pattern across dozens of businesses. They’re focused on revenue, headcount, expansion. But IT? It’s invisible when it’s working, so it becomes an afterthought.

The consequences are predictable. I’ve seen companies delay hiring an IT partner until after a ransomware attack encrypted their entire file share. I’ve watched fast-growing teams rely on a patchwork of tools with no central management—until a compliance audit failed, and they had two weeks to get their act together. I’ve been called in after execs realized that no one offboarded a former employee who still had access to sensitive data three months later.

These aren’t tech failures. They’re operational failures caused by ignoring the role IT plays in stability.

Growth adds complexity. More employees means more endpoints. More data. More systems to manage. More opportunities for someone to click the wrong link or download the wrong app. If you don’t build an IT foundation to support that scale, small problems snowball.

The common thread? Leadership saw IT as a cost to manage, not an enabler of operations. And they waited too long to change that.

You don’t need a massive internal IT team to avoid this. But you do need a plan. That plan should include:

• Centralized user and device management (so you’re not tracking logins in a spreadsheet)
• Endpoint protection and detection (especially with remote or hybrid teams)
• Secure file sharing and backup policies
• Regular audits of access rights and software use
• A point person or service provider with responsibility for all of the above

If your business is in a growth phase, you’re already under pressure. Don’t add unnecessary risk by delaying IT decisions until you’re in crisis mode.

One of the most overlooked parts of smart growth is infrastructure—people think about office space, org charts, maybe finance systems. But IT is infrastructure. It directly impacts how fast you can onboard people, how safely you can operate, and how much downtime you can tolerate.

What I’ve learned is this: the fastest-growing companies aren’t the ones with the flashiest tools. They’re the ones that set up systems to scale before it became urgent.

So if you're hiring aggressively, launching new services, expanding to new locations, or layering on new apps—your IT has to evolve in lockstep. Otherwise, you’re building speed without stability. And I’ve seen where that leads.

Don’t wait for something to break before you give IT a seat at the table. Growth is only good if your business can sustain it. And in 2025, that means IT can’t be optional.