Overhead is almost a dirty word. Nobody wants to be overhead. People want to be spending time on the “real work” rather than the overhead. Overhead is necessary in organizations. The overhead required in a small organization is much different than in a large one.

Small startups are nimble and can run on minimum communication overhead. Large bureaucracies are the opposite - large amounts of overhead to the point of wasteful.

When you are working alone and are solely responsible for an outcome, you don’t have to worry about communicating to a team. You can focus on the work that is most important and execute. You spend very little time on what you might consider “overhead.” You must adjust when the size of your organization grows.

In a larger organization, your role becomes more specialized and you rely on others to support you. Maybe you lead the product development organization in an organization. Someone else does payroll, someone else does sales, someone else handles operations. You must invest the effort required to keep the organization working while different individuals play different roles.

I have often seen individuals in a role in a smaller organization surprised by the change in their responsibility as the organization grows. The job becomes different when there are more people (within and outside your responsibility), and the amount of time you need to dedicate to the overhead of running the organization will grow.

I have also seen individuals move from a role in a smaller company to that same role in a larger company, and are surprised by how different are the day-to-day tasks. You were playing the same “VP of Engineering” job, but when the organization is larger (more sales people, more support people, more engineers) the time you spend on overhead changes.

Reflect on the changes required to the time you spend on activities you consider “overhead” as your organization grows. If you start in a small team and find yourself in a large team, the shift can be difficult to impossible. Adjust your time and expectations, or perhaps consider that you may be happier in a more narrow role if you would prefer to spend less time on communication across the growing organization.